


In Defense Of

by Marauders2003



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Character Study, I don't mean to, I swear, I'm a repetitive person, I'm not good at comedy, I'm unnecessarily over-the-top, Sorry Not Sorry, a series of one shots that I don't have the energy to market separately, but you know... I have reasons, it sounds like I'm Harry- and Hermione- bashing sometimes, it's better than it sounds, not really a story at all, please at least try to laugh when it's obvious, pretty angsty, sometimes I make stuff up, sometimes comedic, thank you very much, usually
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2020-08-25
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:14:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 22,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24975172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marauders2003/pseuds/Marauders2003
Summary: So much. There’s so much that Harry missed, so much he never dared to ask, so much he never knew, never tried to. So many people with their own stories, and we only see them from Harry’s (admittedly) imperfect perspective? That hardly seems fair. Nothing is ever so one-sided as it appears. We judge these flawed characters, yet we never try to understand them. Let’s try.
Kudos: 2





	1. Liar: In Defense of Rita Skeeter

Rita Skeeter was an attention seeking liar. It's the harsh truth of who she was, and there was really no denying it. She was ruthless and self-important and willing to say _anything_ for a few seconds of fame.

But has anyone stopped to ask why? What would drive a person so far to the edge that glory was the only thing that mattered to them? What would lead a reporter to stop pursuing the truth?

People have hated her and idolized her. They have scoffed at her and hung onto her every word. They have ignored her and confronted her. They have reacted exactly the way her work was meant to make them.

But has anyone ever taken a second — just a _second_ — to try to understand her?

Hermione Granger came close. "You don't care, do you," she once said, "anything for a story, and anyone will do, won't they?"

Hermione may have tried. She may have judged her. She may have villainized her, but she'd wondered. Maybe she'd always wonder.

But Hermione was wrong. Rita Skeeter did care. Rita Skeeter cared passionately, whole-heartedly. She just cared about different things.

She cared about fame and fortune and having everyone in the Wizarding world know her name. She cared about herself and her influence, and that's all that really matters, isn't it? She cared about the words her quill scribbled on the page as it glided across that parchment, every word. She cared about the roof over her head and the clothes on her back. She cared about the cigarette in her right hand and the wand in her left. She cared about her beautiful jeweled spectacles and her perfectly curled blonde hair. So maybe her cares weren't perfect, but whose are?

Certainly not Dumbledore's. His cares led to Grindelwald; his cares hurt him, and they hurt Harry too. Not Snape. Definitely not Snape. Snape's cares led him to be a Death Eater; his cares tormented children for years. Not Harry, either. His cares made him too impulsive; his cares led people to die, including himself.

Rita Skeeter was not a good person. There's no denying that. But let's try to see what so many others refused to look for. Maybe if we look hard enough, we'll see a human. An imperfect being. Someone who made mistakes.

Let's do something radical. Something crazy, something odd, something no one has dared to do.

Let's give Rita a chance.

Let's look at Rita Skeeter, with her fake nails and curled hair and Quick Quotes Quill, and see beyond that. Let's see a girl who dreamed her whole life of being a journalist, of seeing her name on a byline. Let's see a girl with green and silver on her chest — and let's be truthful here, she had green and silver in every fiber of her being — who fantasized of being important, of _meaning_ something to the world. Of being someone people relied on. Of being great.

Let's see a girl who spent her every waking moment writing, who whiled away countless nights with a _Lumos_ 'd wand and a prose book before her. Let's see a girl who graduated Hogwarts among the top of her class, who kissed up to Slughorn so he could introduce her to the best of the best, the most famous and renowned writers in the Wizarding world. Let's see a girl who bought herself a Quick Quotes Quill her first day on the job and never looked back.

Let's see a girl who walked into _The Daily Prophet_ headquarters with bright eyes and an open mouth. Let's see a girl who labored day and night on her first story, who checked and double-checked every source, every detail, every letter. Let's see a girl who once wrote the truth.

When her first article was published, no one read it. It was on page twelve, and no one read past page eleven.

When her first article was published, she went to Fortescue's ice cream parlor and watched as everyone flipped past her page, ignored the story she'd worked tirelessly on.

She went home that night and cried until her face was red and puffy and she couldn't muster up any more tears. She looked long and hard in the mirror, and she punched it.

After she'd repaired the mirror and healed her hand, she cut her mousy brown hair, and she dyed it blonde. She curled it into ringlets and plucked her eyebrows thin. She painted her lips red and bought a pair of shocking scarlet heels to match.

And then she looked again. And she smiled.

And it wasn't the shy smile she'd given during her interview. It wasn't the genuine smile she had when she laughed. It was confident and it was fake and she liked it.

She turned in her next article, and it wasn't some fluff piece like her first one. It didn't spout on about the goodness of the world. It was an exposé. And maybe it wasn't _entirely_ true, and maybe she'd had to eavesdrop to get some of the information in it, but it got attention. It was on page six, and people read it, moved on, and then reread it. And Rita smiled that fake smile, went home, and researched better ways to eavesdrop.

She spent the next year of her life becoming an Animagus. She didn't register (how could she let people know her secret to success?).

She never looked back.

(Years later, she'd be stuffed into a jar and blackmailed by a fifteen-year old girl. She wouldn't like it. You see, this girl was too much like Rita. Not Rita now, but Rita then. The Rita that had been obsessed with changing the world and making a difference. That Rita was long gone, but here was the girl.)

Every story was a little less truthful than the last, but it was a little more popular than the last too, and that's what matters. To Rita, anyway.

She was living her dream. She was famous and she was listened to, and she _mattered_.

Rita never looked back. She never was a good journalist, never managed to tell the whole truth, but she could tell a good story.

Rita Skeeter was a girl who found herself and lost herself all in the same day. She wore her heels and her head high, and she was not ashamed. She was a liar, and she was proud.

She got what she wanted, and she never compromised, and that's what matters, isn't it? She got everything she had ever dreamed of, and that's enough, right?

Except sometimes at night, when she was in bed trying to go to sleep, the smirk slipped off her face, and a frown replaced it. Sometimes at night, she'd get a little niggling feeling in the pit of the stomach, and she'd brush it away. She'd bury it deep, so deep that she wouldn't think about it the next day, almost wouldn't remember it, but she'd feel it all the same.

She'd tell herself it was the price of fame. She'd tell herself it was the coming down from a high after a good story, but since when has Rita Skeeter told the truth?

(She'd told it twice, once in her first article, and once to Harry Potter. She really _did_ know things about Ludo Bagman that would make your skin crawl, and it would have made a great story.)

So yes, Rita Skeeter wasn't a good person, but she could have been. She was shallow and selfish, but she found it was safer that way. She wasn't nice, but she was only trying to protect herself. She wasn't Ravenclaw material, but she could aim as high as the best of them and shoot even higher. She wasn't brave, but she'd do anything for a story. She didn't tell the truth, but there was truth in what she said. No, she wasn't honest, but she'd tried to be, once upon a time. And doesn't that count for something?

So yes, I'd say Rita Skeeter deserves a chance. And maybe you couldn't trust what she said, but she'd appreciate it all the same. Because maybe, just maybe, under all the curls and lipstick and venom, there is a human being.

Rita Skeeter was a liar through and through, and she wasn't ashamed. But surely, there are worse things to be.


	2. Tattletale: In Defense of Marietta Edgecombe

Marietta Edgecombe lands pretty solidly in the "villain" category across the board. And justly, right? Traitors are the worst kind of person, and there's no excuse.

Look at Peter Pettigrew. Look at Seamus Finnegan. Look at Severus Snape — oh wait.

Wait a second. Didn't Harry give Pettigrew a chance, back in third year? And didn't he forgive Seamus too, once the bloke came around? And didn't he call Severus Snape "one of the bravest men he ever knew"?

So what makes Marietta Edgecombe so different? Was it that she was outright and honest about her distrust of Harry? Or because she didn't have the courage Ron did? Maybe it was because she had bad timing.

Well, first of all, she had the nerve — the _nerve_ — to not believe Harry! How dare she! How dare she have doubts in his uncorroborated story when the vast majority of the Wizarding world, including her own mother, didn't believe him either! What a monster! And just who did she think she was, with her wrinkled nose and reluctant hand, when Hermione asked her to sign her name to a paper that would condemn her if in the wrong hands? Such a menace. And obviously, if she didn't trust Harry, she oughtn't have let on that she didn't. Honestly, it's not like her House encourages integrity.

Damn. Well, there's gotta be something, we can pin on her, right?

In all fairness, she did betray Dumbledore's Army, a strictly prohibited organization run by a teenager in opposition to the Ministry of Magic. There's no denying that she went blabbing to Umbridge. There's no denying she distinctly and intentionally broke the promise every D.A. member made when they signed that page.

But she betrayed someone far before that. She betrayed her mum and dad, who expressly forbade her from acting against the Ministry in any way, shape, or form. Her mum worked for the Ministry, you know.

And before you compare Marietta to Ron, know that her mum didn't work for the Ministry the way Arthur Weasley worked for the Ministry. Her mum worked for the Ministry because she _loved_ it, every moment. Her place in the world was right behind that desk.

(Marietta had grown up behind that desk, too. She'd grown up counting the number of times she could twirl around in that swivel chair without getting dizzy. She'd grown up exploring every nook and cranny of that desk, every dent and scratch. She'd slept on the floor, sheltered by the desk, made comfy by her mother's charms, when her mother had to work late nights and her father had the night shift at St. Mungo's.)

No, her mother was not like Arthur Weasley. Her mother had worked for the Ministry since she'd graduated. Her mother had climbed the ranks of her department steadily since, and she had a respectable position near the Department Head. Her mother had faith in the Ministry, and she believed _The Daily Prophet_. You must admit that a fourteen-year old boy who'd been projected as mentally broken and unstable by Rita Skeeter claiming that a long-dead terrorist was back after thirteen years was just a smidge absurd.

So yeah, Marietta believed her mum. Who wouldn't, at that age, when the alternative was as dark and terrifying as it was?

And when her mum and dad sat her down and specifically instructed her not to do anything that might upset anyone at the Ministry, Marietta gave her word and meant it.

Because Marietta was not disloyal.

When Cho Chang, her best friend, suffered a tragedy, and spent the better part of her days in tears, it was Marietta who handed her a tissue. When Cho's other friends scoffed and said to get over it already, it was Marietta who shot back that grief had no time limit and pulled Cho in for a tight hug. When Cho started crying because she liked Harry but felt like she was disrespecting Cedric by liking Harry, it was Marietta who rolled her eyes, said, "Ced's too dead to care," (because she was blunt and honest like that), and patted her back until the tears subsided.

And before you point out the whole, "Well, she was obviously not loyal to Dumbledore's Army," you're right. She wasn't. She never was. You really think she signed up for that blasted club to spite her mum? To fight for a cause she didn't believe in? No, she signed up because she was loyal to Cho.

And every second she spent in that pub or in that room was a second she could have ruined her future, ruined her mum's future, ruined everything. And that ate at her more than anything.

And she kept saying to herself, over and over, like a mantra, _This is for Cho. Cho doesn't have anyone but me._ But then she realized. That wasn't exactly true, was it? Cho had Harry. She didn't need anyone else. She got what she wanted.

But here she was, endangering everything her mum had worked so hard for.

And it was that thought that propelled her to Umbridge's office that fateful night. It was that thought that opened her mouth and spilled everything. It was that thought that forever villainized her.

_SNEAK_. It was written on her forehead for the rest of her life, and that's fair punishment? She forever had those scars for a decision she made at seventeen years old, and that's just? She prioritized her mum over her friend, and this is the price she paid?

Hermione Granger was a spiteful, close-minded, self-righteous girl who took justice into her own hands. But was it really justice? Was it really justice that Marietta had a split-second "mistake" speak for her from that moment onward? That every good deed she'd ever done was negated, and she was defined by one word she could never erase?

Is that the lesson Hermione wanted to teach? Is that the penance Harry so adamantly agreed with?

They are the heroes, and she is a villain, but nothing is ever so black-and-white as Hermione Granger made it seem, is it?

Marietta Edgecombe was a sneak, in that one moment of that one day of that one week in that one month of that one year in time. But she more than paid the price, don't you think?


	3. Crybaby: In Defense of Cho Chang

_Once upon a time, in a castle not too far from here, a girl fell in love with a boy who was kind and fair and gentle, and it was beautiful. They held hands and hugged, and they talked about spending the rest of their lives together._

_But what you need to know is that not all stories are happy. For these two lovers were torn apart by death. The girl was forced to live without the boy, and every day was torture. People didn't understand why she was so sad, and they were mean to her, sometimes. They called her a crybaby, and they told her to get over it._

_The girl tried; she tried so hard. She forced herself to keep going, to get involved, to find something to fight for that her lost love would have done. She joined a special club for people who wanted to make a difference._

_This club did not understand her either, and it did not understand the one friend who had stayed by her. But the girl fought on their side anyway, because it's what the boy would have wanted. And slowly, she got a bit happier, but she still cried._

_What these people didn't understand was that crying is healthy. It helps you get out all the fear and anger and sadness and loneliness. Never be afraid to cry. It's not a sign of weakness; it's a sign of strength._

_This girl knew that, and she went on to lead a nice life and be content in it, and maybe she didn't live happily-ever-after, exactly, but happily-ever-afters are overrated anyway._

Cho Chang told this story to her two children every night. One was named Marietta, and the other was Cedric. Marietta didn't know her mother was the girl in the story until she was sixteen, years into Hogwarts, when she overheard some Hufflepuffs talking about Cedric and thought they were talking about her little brother. But her little brother was not magical, and so he had not gone to Hogwarts.

Marietta thought long and hard about what to say to her mother, about confronting her and hearing the story from her perspective, about asking why she had refused to talk about her past and yet had told it to them every night, but she was a Hufflepuff (like Cedric), and so she kept her mouth shut when she hugged her mother at the start of winter break, and the only indication that she knew anything at all was that she hugged her mum a bit tighter than usual.

Cho Chang was a sensitive soul in a war. She saw the cruelty of the world day after day, and she spent half her life fighting back against it, but she spent the other half crying. You see, Cho understood a harsh truth that her war-obsessed peers didn't. She understood that this world was too beautiful to be as horrible as people made it to be, and that was not right, so when she cried for Cedric every night, she cried for the world too.

People call Cho Chang pathetic. They call her sad and jealous and immature. She was only two of those things.

Cho Chang cried every day because she didn't get so swept up in a war that she forgot what was important. She cried every day, but she turned in her schoolwork on time. She cried every day, but she joined Dumbledore's Army, and she learned how to defend herself, even though her parents warned her not to act against the Ministry. She cried every day, but she tried to move on too, tried and failed. People weren't as understanding as she was.

So don't call Cho Chang pathetic. She was vulnerable and she was compassionate and she felt things, felt them deeply, but she was stronger than you could ever imagine.

And think about this: if the person you considered to be the love of your life was murdered when you were sixteen, would you cry? Would you want to talk about it? Would you try to get closure from the one who watched it happen? Would you take the people you love most and hold them close, so close they almost couldn't breathe?

Cho did.

But people didn't emphasize with her; they mocked her, deserted her, analyzed her. Hermione saw through her complex emotions, but did she do anything about it? Did she give her a hug? Did she do anything but help Harry understand her?

Don't get me wrong, that effort in itself was tremendous. It was more than most did. But for all that she saw what Cho was going through, she didn't realize that Cho didn't need a relationship to deal with it. To be honest, neither did Cho.

Let's not talk about the girl that was Harry Potter's first romance. That girl was clingy, distrusting, stuck in the past. That girl was a mistake. That's how we see her, anyway.

Let's talk about the girl whose life broke into billions of pieces at age sixteen, but she managed to put herself back together anyway. Let's talk about the girl who, after a string of failed relationships, after night after night and day after day of crying, after being told she was weak, realized just how strong she was. Let's talk about the girl who didn't spiral after a tragedy; she took this broken train she was riding in, and she fixed it, even if it didn't move the way it used to.

Let's talk about a girl — a girl, not a woman — who faced tragedy after tragedy, mourned each loss, and kept going. Let's talk about a girl who fought and won a war before age twenty. Let's talk about a girl who was far too mature for her age, who knew suppressing your emotions was no way to live.

Cho was jealous of other girls (who isn't?), but not for the same, superficial reasons most girls had. She was jealous of girls that were happy, that could take the love of their life and hold them close, without six feet of dirt and grass in the way. She was jealous not for something she'd never had, but for something she'd lost, and can't you understand that?

Cho Chang thought her life ended after Cedric died. But that was his life, not hers. That was their life, but she didn't have to stay bound to it. Cho was a Ravenclaw, and proud, and she realized what it truly meant to be one after Cedric died.

So one day Cho stood before a fidgety Muggle, and she said, "I do," and she meant it, because Cho Chang was simply too beautiful for the world in which she'd grown up. She was a swan among owls.

"Crybaby" is not enough a word to describe Cho. Cho is not defined by any one word, but three just might do the trick. Cho is "Nevertheless, she persisted."


	4. Pretty: In Defense of Fleur Delacour

All anyone saw when they looked at Fleur was her beauty. The slim figure, the shiny hair, the small nose, the full lips, the big eyes. Girls envied her. Boys were infatuated with her. They looked at Fleur, and they saw the Veela.

(Once upon a time, she'd worn loose and baggy outfits to distract from her body. She'd shorn her hair short and wore no makeup. She'd kept her head down and her shoulders slumped. She'd done everything she could not to be the center of attention. She'd failed. She'd cried, and people had come running and begged to know why such a gorgeous girl was upset. It'd never occur to them that perhaps she was upset because she was gorgeous.)

But if they'd dug just a little bit deeper, took a second glance at her, they'd have seen past the smooth skin and captivating (fake) smile. A little deeper, and they'd have seen the snob who criticized everything and yet had burnt out at the Triwizard Tournament. People like that said she was a disgrace to women, that because of this one pathetic girl, people would assume women were incapable of doing everything a man could. That because this one girl had so badly lost the competition, no one would expect a girl to be able to win it. People like that said she was a superficial, haughty Frenchwoman who nothing was good enough for. They saw nothing more than the upturned nose and eye rolls, and they heard nothing but z's and scoffs ("Uh! I zink zis is poor quality, no?")

Maybe if they'd looked just a second longer, they would have seen those mesmerizing eyes shine with tears and that mightily raised nose waver. Maybe if they'd been a bit more sympathetic, they'd have seen a homesick little girl who used to at least be able give her mother a hug after a long, hard day. Maybe they'd have seen a girl who craved for her own school and her own food and her own bed. Maybe they would have slipped her a reassuring smile every now and then.

Gone another layer down, and they'd have seen a hard worker. Someone who'd worked day and night to be worthy of that tournament, so that people might see her as more than just a pretty face. They would have seen the girl who studied Charms, Transfiguration, and basic Defense, but had never thought to look at creatures. They'd have seen the girl who was the best of the best at Beauxbatons, but was still seen as good-looking before anything else.

And deeper than that, they would have seen strength. Pure, unadulterated strength. They would have seen the girl who'd had to be physically restrained to be stopped from going back in that damned lake for her little sister. The girl who would later hold her husband's hand in that hospital wing, kiss his scarred face, and never leave his side. The girl who took in ragged teenager after teenager at Shell Cottage without asking questions or analyzing their filthy outfits, without even saying a word in complaint. She cared for five teens, an old man, and a goblin within her first year of marriage, and she only ever thought to give them a warm smile and good food.

And at the very center of Fleur was passion. After years of being at the receiving end of lust, she'd almost lost track of what love was, until she met Bill, who patiently and thoroughly uncovered every layer of her like he truly cared, which was so much more than Fleur could say for most. And she'd taken care of him with a kind of ferventness that could rival Molly Weasley's, and never once did she ever consider leaving his side.

But the thing about all of this is that nearly no one ever managed to make it past layer one, and no one but Bill and her own parents had ever gone past layer two. Because that's the thing about beauty. It's skin deep. And it's deceptive.

People look at Fleur, and they see a body. Or they look, and they see a stuck up little brat. They see the Veela. Let's see the human.

When you're beautiful, people think it defines you. It doesn't. You're defined by what you're willing to fight for.

Fleur would fight tooth and nail for her family, and she would probably win, but it would be anything but pretty. She didn't know how to defeat a grindylow, but she would risk everything to do it, if that's what it took. Fleur risked her life multiple times for a war that wasn't hers, and doesn't that make her more than a face?

People call her a shame for losing the tournament so badly, but nobody had ever taught her to deal with dragons, and she'd heard some Durmstrang in the audience comment on her legs, and she'd never seen a dragon before, so cut her some slack, yeah? And she'd seen her _baby sister_ down there, surrounded by those horrid looking merpeople, and the grindlylows were vicious, really, and creatures were never her strong suit anyway. And how many of you would have held up against a Death Eater, at age eighteen, when you weren't expecting it?

She's a disgrace to women, sure, but the Goblet of Fire hadn't thought so. Actually, it'd thought her to be the most worthy of all Beauxbatons students, so maybe we need to blame their curriculum.

Fleur defied odds and expectations, and people still underestimated her. She lost the tournament and won a war she had no obligation to fight in. She got engaged to a handsome guy, but she didn't marry one. She was homesick, but she made Britain her home. But yes, she's shallow and conceited and weak.

Beauty is skin deep, but below that is fire and compassion and commitment and humanity and _truth_ , and don't tell me that's not what's really important.

Fleur was nicknamed "Phlegm" by her future sister-in-law and coldly tolerated by her future mother-in-law, but she held her chin high, and she only let Bill see the tears. Fleur was ogled at by half of her future brothers-in-law, but she was used to it by now. Molly had offered her an out that night in the hospital wing, but Fleur knew better than to judge Bill for the way he looked. Hermione whispered behind her back for years, but Fleur still wrapped her in a blanket and tried to stop her shaking that night after Malfoy Manor.

If you remember nothing else about Fleur from this point onward, remember this. Remember these moments and remember that _that's_ what defines a person, far more than beauty or words. Don't remember Fleur Delacour, 1/4 Veela. Remember Fleur Delcaour, 3/4 human.


	5. Insignificant: In Defense of Ron Weasley

He wasn't the oldest, nor the youngest. He wasn't responsible; no, that was Bill. He wasn't compassionate; Charlie held that position. He wasn't ambitious; that went to Percy. He was funny, yes, but nowhere near so much as Fred and George. And daring? Psh, Ginny had more boldness in the smallest, most mundane twig of her stolen broomstick than Ron would ever have.

Even among his friends, Ron wasn't remarkable in the slightest. Hermione was the smart one, Harry the hero. Ron, well, he was the hero's best mate.

And just in case one tried to tell him that was a rather glorious position all its own, think about it. Who was Merlin's best friend? Viktor Krum's? Riddle me this, who here thought of pathetic little Elphias Doge before Dumbledore?

And honestly, it's not like he's accomplished all that much. In first year, Harry defeated Quirrell and fended off You-Know-Who while Ron was pummeled by a chess piece. Second year, Ron got trapped by rubble and saved only by the luck of his own broken wand. Third year, he missed out on time travel because he was in the hospital wing, nursing a broken leg. Fourth year, he watched from the stands as his best mate took on challenge after challenge and eventually came back cradling Cedric's corpse (well, he didn't much envy that part). And yeah, he had the whole prefect thing going in fifth year, but Harry was the one who saved his father's life. Ron was bested by a brain. Sixth year, he made the Quidditch team and nearly cost them the Cup, not to mention nearly dying (Harry saved him). (Harry was also warding off Inferi and watching Dumbledore take his last breaths.) And that last year, well, that last year he walked out. Abandoned them. He couldn't even be called loyal.

 _Failure_ , he'd tell himself whenever the professors would give him _that_ look. _Failure_ , he'd think every time the Quaffle flew right past. _Failure_ , said the voice in the depths of his head, springing forward as he helplessly watched Harry save the day again, unable to help. Being worthless. A liability. A burden.

 _Failure_ , watching Hermione figure out something he'd completely missed. _Failure_ , being so clueless, so often. _Failure_ , screamed the locket, burning bright against his chest. He couldn't breathe. The rise and fall only brought more pain. More truth.

 _Failure_. _Failure_. _Failure_. _Failure, failure, failure! Failure failure failure failure!_ He tried to beat it into his head. It didn't take much. _Failure_. He'd never forget it, never truly be free of it.

Except—

Except hadn't he always been among the first to fight against oppression? All those years back, in Snape's class, defending Hermione. Ron was bested by a chess piece, but hadn't he _chosen_ that fate — sacrifice? Maybe he hadn't been the bravest, but hadn't he faced his fears, as he followed the spiders and found something far worse? He'd missed the whole Scabbers-Pettigrew debacle, but hadn't he put all he'd had into saving Buckbeak? He wasn't the Champion for Gryffindor, but he'd stayed up late with Harry too, often been the good-natured spell dummy. Maybe he'd been a bit of a git in fourth year, letting his jealousy get the best of him, but hadn't he made up for it, standing proudly by his side all fifth year, from glaring at Seamus Finnegan to following Harry into the deepest depths of the Department of Mysteries? He'd gone through a rough patch in sixth year, but he'd won the Cup, fought to defend Hogwarts, and vowed to stand by Harry. Maybe he hadn't lived up to that promise, exactly, but he'd _come back_ , and he'd saved Harry, and he'd led them through Harry's depression and obsession.

Was he selfish? Of course, as all people are, at one time or another. But let's not forget all those days spent glued to the wireless, waiting and expecting and hoping he didn't hear anything. Let's not forget the dungeon at Malfoy Manor, where his cries could be heard for miles (but they weren't for him. They were for Hermione.) Let's not forget convincing Fred and George to help him hijack the Ford Anglia on a rescue mission that couldn't wait. Let's not forget that one move, the move that'd land him in the hospital wing. He'd never forget the towering figure of that White Queen.

Ron Weasley suffered a tragedy and kept fighting. He didn't pick things up the fastest, but he worked until he did. He wasn't the best dueler, but he said his spells, and he meant them. He wasn't born special, but what matters is who he grew to be. He made mistakes, and lots of them, but don't we all? And he always made up for it. He risked everything for the people he cared about (and even some that he didn't. _Ahem, Malfoy_.) time and time again, and he'd gladly do it again. So maybe you can't glorify what he did, but you can understand it, surely.

And maybe you can.

But perhaps Ron's biggest fault was that _he_ couldn't.

He couldn't ever see beyond his downfalls, his mistakes. (But he kept on, anyway.) He couldn't ever see himself as anything but _there_ , in the way. (But he made sure he was there all the same.) He couldn't take it sometimes, so he wasn't always there. (But he always came back.)

To be quite honest, there's no real reason Ron Weasley needs to be defended. He's one of the heroes, isn't he? A good guy. Sure, he had his faults, but don't we all?

So what's so special about Ron Weasley? What sets him apart from anyone else?

Well. Isn't that the problem at hand?

For no one has ever detested Ron Weasley nearly so much as he himself.


	6. Burn-out: In Defense of Hannah Abbott

All members of Dumbledore's Army were extended the honor of immediate acceptance into the Auror Training Program, with the exception of Harry Potter and Ron Weasley, whom it seemed were allowed to bypass training altogether. They'd already fought and defeated the most dangerous threat, one even the Aurors couldn't face (though they were mostly corrupt at the time).

So more than a few people raised an eyebrow when they walked into the Leaky Cauldron and saw naive little Hannah Abbott scrubbing up the counter (she preferred doing it the Muggle way). And more than a few simpered, "Dear, sweet child, this is not where you belong."

Hannah would give them a strained smile, pull a quill from where it was tucked behind her ear (her hair was always slathered in ink by the end of the day, but she did it anyway), and grit out, "Mmhm. And what can I do for you today?"

To tell you the truth, she couldn't have cared less where they thought she _belonged_. She was here, and they were there, and that's all that really matters, isn't it? (But she was much too nice to say that.) Hannah resisted the urge to spit in their drink, handed it to them gently, and said, as warmly as you please, "Enjoy." (Her apron would be wrinkled beyond ironing, from the way she gripped it in frustration sometimes.)

Once upon a time, it'd been her hair, her innocent blonde pigtails, that had born the brunt of her emotions. (But she'd chopped them off, part way through what ought to have been her sixth year.) A blip in her day, a confusing problem, and _yank_ , her hair was in her mouth and she was chewing on it before you could realize she'd moved at all. (Her mother had always hated that habit. Hannah was full of bad habits.)

She remembered the first day of her first year at Hogwarts. Her mum hugged her tight on Platform 9 3/4 and whispered, "Never let anyone speak for who you are," in her ear, like it was their special secret. The secret of life. Her dad tugged one of her pigtails affectionately. (Her mum scowled.)

She remembered cowering in the wake of Sorting, of hearing her name, first, and wobbling up to the stool. Hannah couldn't recall why she was so nervous. She'd always known it'd be Hufflepuff. She worked hard and wore her heart on her sleeve, and in all the years she'd live, she'd never regret it.

The next girl to sit at the table — Susan Bones — was decidedly less excitable, but they became inseparable all the same.

Over the next six years, Hannah learned what it truly meant and took to be a Hufflepuff. It meant being ignored and underestimated and looked down upon. It meant being perpetually in the background and being content in it. It meant knowing others thought less of you and being the better person anyway.

It wasn't easy. Hannah's temper flared whenever the words "miscellaneous," "stupid," and "leftovers" came up. She fumed at the mention of "a lot o' duffers." Couldn't people see that Hufflepuffs were so much more? They weren't brainiacs, but they were hard workers. Not gloryhounds, but they were fair. Not particularly cunning, but exceptionally dedicated.

So yeah, when Cedric Diggory became Hogwarts Champion and finally earned Hufflepuff a bit of well-deserved attention, Hannah cheered as loud as she could. And when Harry Potter seemed to be unable to not be center of attention, Hannah wore a "Potter Stinks" badge, and she wasn't ashamed.

When her hero and friend died, Hannah rolled up her sleeves and sloppily signed her name to Hermione Granger's parchment. Cedric had died because he hadn't expected it. Hannah would.

And when, in sixth year, she got pulled out of class and told her mother had been killed simply for being Muggle-born, Hannah went home. And no, she didn't come back for the rest of the year.

But she wasn't lazy. Far from it.

She went home and found a mass of used tissues and scratchy blankets on the couch, and it looked suspiciously like a human, and it smelled _rank_ , so Hannah cooked a nice, hot meal. And when both she and the mass had eaten, she shoved said mass into the bathroom with a towel, change of clothes, and plenty of soap. Then she cried. And when she looked up at her reflection and saw the pigtails, she just . . . well, she grabbed a pair of scissors and started snipping away.

Hannah spent what should have been her sixth year making sure her father lived to see her seventh, and she didn't regret a thing.

Then Susan showed up at her doorstep.

"You cut your hair," commented Susan in the same composed voice as always. She reached out as if to touch it, but pulled her hand back quickly.

"Hi, Susan," replied Hannah, calmly as she could muster.

"Auntie Amelia died."

Then Hannah wrapped her in a hug so tight she was sure Susan would start gasping for air. Susan sniffed and clutched her even tighter.

Seventh year, Hannah went back, and she rejoined the D.A., and she _fought_. She fought with everything she had. She watched friends tortured, and she took some of that too, and later she saw people die.

So when the year was over, she didn't go back again. She _couldn't_ go back to Hogwarts. It wasn't the same, and neither was she.

So no, Hannah didn't take her N.E.W.T.s. She walked into the Leaky Cauldron and picked up an apron and never looked back. She left the war behind her, and she didn't miss it. Not at all.

And one day, she glanced up from behind the bar to see Neville Longbottom sitting on the other side.

She remembered the timid, kind boy from Hogwarts. She remembered the confident young man from seventh year. This Neville was a bit of both.

"Oi," she said with a bit of a grin, "what'll it be?"

When Hannah married Neville, he was just starting as the new Herbology professor. She had just been made landlady of the Leaky Cauldron, and she was proud.

"I'm not quitting my job," she had told him confidently when he proposed.

"I'd never ask you to," he responded immediately, steadily.

"My mum once told me to never let anyone speak for who I am," she continued uncertainly.

"Your mum," said Neville, "was a smart woman."

"The best," agreed Hannah, gripping her apron.

(Hannah's hair grew back, but she'd never wear pigtails again.)

Say Hannah Abbott burned out as much as you'd like, that she peaked at 18 and went downhill from there, but Hannah Abbott lived exactly the life she was meant to. And she didn't regret a thing.


	7. Traitor: In Defense of Peter Pettigrew

Peter Pettigrew was good at surviving. People called him weak, they called him talentless, they said he was stupid, foolish, coward. People never expected him to prove them so wrong.

Peter knew how life worked, and he knew he'd drawn the short straw. He knew his place on the totem pole, and he knew how to navigate it.

He was not brave nor handsome nor charming. He was not the smartest or the coolest or the most likeable. He couldn't play Quidditch (or even fly), and his teachers considered him a hopeless student. People have mourned him, have regretted their harsh words, have pitied him, but have they ever considered that he was so much more than he was ever made out to be?

They call him unremarkable, simple, and yet he was so complex he stumped the Sorting Hat. They call him weak, stupid, but he sure knew how to choose the right friends. They call him talentless, but has anyone else fooled an entire world so well? Has anyone else disappeared so completely? They call him a traitor, and he was. He was a traitor until the day he died.

They say there were four Marauders, and perhaps there were, but there were only three best mates. Three best mates and a fangirl pledge themselves brothers for life . . . what a joke. Peter was a portable audience, an available set of hands to applaud at the right moment. He was not one of them. Not even close.

He'd tried to be, once. He'd seen these three, the coolest blokes in school, and he'd thought he was one of them, that he belonged. He'd thought they were his friends.

For six years, he'd felt safe. Useful. Lupin needed them, and they needed him. The entire scheme rested on Peter's Animagus form. He was the only one who could grant access past the Willow.

More than that, he understood them. They understood him. They laughed with him, groaned in sympathy at his struggles, helped him. He supported them, cheered them on, carried out the grunt work.

Then THEY came, and THEY whispered in his ear, and suddenly it all made sense. They weren't laughing with him; they were laughing at him. They didn't sympathize with him; they groaned at the sound of his whining. They helped him out of pity. And they used him.

THEY said all these things, and it was clear. Peter understood, really, truly. He knew he'd been fooling himself all these years. He felt betrayed. He felt threatened, abused. (How ironic that would turn out to be.)

 _Come to our side_ , THEY said, _and we will appreciate you. We will put your skill to great use. We will know how important you are. You will be important, powerful. You will win._ (And the unsaid: he will live.)

Peter's always been good at surviving.

He was a traitor, yes, but in his mind, really, they'd betrayed him first.

So when he charged into battle beside his "friends," he didn't get hurt. Even when Marlene got killed, Dorcas, Benjy, Fab, Gid. And when people didn't care enough to order him out of the room for the suspicious information, he took advantage. And when his "mates" scoffed and rolled their eyes behind his back, he saw it. And he knew.

Even to their deaths, they underestimated him. Poor, puny Peter, can't even cast a Patronus. Stupid, foolish Peter, no one will suspect. Yes, weak, talentless Peter, our secret's safe with him.

Oh, how wrong they were.

So James and Lily died, and Peter didn't, because he knew what they didn't. He knew that light was futile when darkness would always get there first, would always linger, would always win. He knew good wasn't as great as it claimed to be, but bad wasn't quite so terrible either.

All these years of losing wizard's chess, and he'd won the game that truly mattered, killed the queen without even being caught. No one suspects the pawn. Checkmate, Prongs. You'll never taunt me again.

Then Sirius found him.

The look in his eyes, so broken and hurt and _betrayed_ , sent him crashing back down to earth. He knew that look. He'd worn it. And then it hit him. Merlin, what has he done? Sure, James was arrogant, but he'd saved his life, all those years ago. Kept bullies away and made him feel important. And Lily, she was so sweet. She'd never wronged him. And _Harry_.

He wished Harry had died. He'd meant them all to die. All of them. James and Lily and Harry and Sirius and Remus. He'd never wanted this.

They were supposed to die.

And Sirius, before him, scared and devastated and furious, and he just thinks, _I'm sorry, but I can't change this. Don't you see? It's too late. We're too late._ And he has to get out of this, has to leave, has to hide. No one's particularly happy with him right now, not on either side. So he runs. He runs and he hides, and his escape is flawless.

Peter's always been good at surviving. But not living.

For twelve years, he hides and cowers and survives, and no one ever thinks to incriminate him. When his cover is blown, Peter is almost relieved. No more pretending. Peter hates pretenders.

With James and Remus and Sirius, they'd hidden their true opinions of him behind pity and false kindness. He'd much rather be mocked to his face, which is what comes out of following the Dark Lord. No deception. No chance of being hurt. A new kind of safety.

Harry looks just like his father, did you know that? Peter thinks of it often; time is all he ever seems to have. Just like James, but — but kinder. And sometimes Peter thinks maybe he chose wrong.

But he chose, nonetheless, and now he must stick with it. So he grovels, and he kills, and he resurrects his master. And then he waits. Waits to be useful again. Waits through more torment and spite. It's what's necessary to survive.

Peter's good at that, you know.

Peter Pettigrew was a traitor, through and through, until the day he died. He'd betrayed his friends, his secrets, himself, and that day, he betrayed his Lord.

He understood what it meant, you know. Sometimes, to live, someone else has got to die. He learned that lesson a long time ago. He just never thought he'd be on the other end of it.

Peter Pettigrew was good at surviving, until he wasn't.


	8. Abandoned: In Defense of George Weasley

He remembers the yelling, the uproar of their enraged mother. He remembers the panting, the running as fast as their chubby little legs can go. He remembers the crying, the howling of poor, traumatized Ronniekins. Most of all, he remembers the laughter, the two cackles sounding identical, mischievous, happy.

He remembers their first switch. A simple exchange of names. They only lasted ten seconds, and Mum punished them swiftly, without mercy, but they'd do it again in a heartbeat, just to see if they could get away with it the next time, and they do.

He remembers the way they worked. Fred came up with the ideas; he made them functional. Fred was unbridled chaos; he softened the blow. Fred got them into trouble; he made sure they didn't get caught. (He didn't always succeed.)

He remembers the pecking order at home. Bill, the logical one. Charlie, the adventurous one. Percy, the responsible one. Ron, the friendly one. Ginny, the fierce one. And they were the life of the family, the ones who brought the laughter and excitement and kept everyone on their toes.

He remembers their first train ride to Hogwarts. He'd been awestruck, but Fred just bounded into the fullest compartment like he'd been there all his life. Like he belonged there. (He did.)

He remembers getting the Marauder's Map. He dropped the Dungbomb; Fred grabbed the map. He figured it out; Fred mastered the art of using it help them. They memorized it like the backs of their nearly identical hands.

He remembers joining the Quidditch team, second year. Beaters had to work in perfect tandem with each other, and who better for that than a pair of twins? Fred may have been the more extreme in life, but he was more aggressive on the field.

He remembers the experimenting. Trial, trial, and try again. He remembers the first success, and he remembers the many — _many_ — explosions. Fred always laughed after each one, uncontrollably and contagiously; he'd crack a wry smile, and think of another way to do it.

He remembers Fred thought of the joke shop idea first. He came up with the name, the design, and the boring stuff. Fred was the showman; he was the behind the scenes guy. ("I'm just more handsome," Fred would claim. "We look exactly the same," he always pointed out. "Well," considered Fred seriously, "I guess I just pull it off better.")

He remembers Percy leaving. He remembers how Mum cried and Dad looked angrier than he'd ever seen him. He remembers the look of pure betrayal on Fred's face, and he remembers hating Percy right then and there.

He remembers the moment the war got real, for him at least. Lying on the couch, blood gushing from his head, his brother and mum absolutely terrified for him. He remembers the fear of getting hit. He remembers thinking he didn't want to die. He couldn't leave his twin.

The joke was on him.

He remembers seeing his dead body, surrounded by the dead bodies of everyone else he knew or didn't. He remembers the frozen laughter on his brother's face, like he knew some grand joke the rest of them didn't. He'd always been a part of those jokes, before.

He remembers because it's all he can do anymore. Because he can't laugh and he can't smile and he can't _live_ , not without Fred. He was one half of a whole, but the other half had left, and he'd never felt so alone, so betrayed. He's angry, and he's bitter, and he hates _Fred_ , but mainly he hates that he can't hate him. Because Fred was the one who left, but he was the one who paid.

He avoids mirrors for two years after. He doesn't leave Charlie's room at the Burrow for four months. He definitely doesn't go into their room. He doesn't do anything on April 1, and he doesn't even get out of bed on May 2.

He's subjected to speeches, pity, and interventions. He sits through laughter, tears, and voices, but never the one he truly wants to hear.

Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes almost goes bankrupt, and for a long time, he can't bring himself to care. What was the point? (Harry and Ron and Bill keep the place running in his absence.)

He hates himself for falling in love with Angelina. He really, really does. He tries to run from it, but fate is cruel, and it has a strange sense of humor, and he can't help but be drawn to his twin's ex-girlfriend. Sometimes he thinks she sees Fred when she looks at him, but he can't even see himself anymore.

When Angie gets pregnant a second time, it's a boy, and she wants to name him Fred II. He objects; it feels too much like replacing him. But he holds his newborn son, and really, it's the only name that could ever fit.

He lives a happy, lovely life, surrounded by his wife and kids and brothers and sister and nephews and nieces and Mum and Dad and, regrettably, Great-Aunt Muriel, and he feels guilty that Fred never got this chance. Every day. It's a cruel twist of fate, but he can't help being glad he was the one who lived. And he hates himself for that.

He dies an old man, and he's buried next to his brother. He wakes up in Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes. But there are mirrors everywhere. And he's young. He's got both ears and everything. And the store's empty. (It's never empty.)

And this reflection behind him speaks, and it's not a reflection at all.

"Hey, Georgie," says twenty-year-old Fred, with that same dumb smirk on his face (the one he's always had), "How you feelin'?"

He grins and says, "Holy," and means it.


	9. Deserter: In Defense of Fred Weasley

When Fred sets his mind to something, that something happens. He is a lesson in contrasts, all extremes and nothing else. 'Between' and 'Middle' are not words in his dictionary.

So when evil baby Ron breaks his toy broom, well, he's got to teach that tosser a lesson, hasn't he? And Fred can tell you, seeing Ron's chubby legs fleeing from his once-beloved teddy was satisfying as hell.

And when Harry-bloody-Potter needed their help, you can bet money Fred and George went big. The Ford Anglia debacle caused quite a bit of commotion with Mum. (But it was so worth it.)

And speaking of bets, when Ludo Bagman proposed a wager, the twins put everything they had into his hand on a crazy theory, and they _won_. (Of course they did.) They never did get their money back, but karma's a fickle thing, isn't it, Ludo?

And when perfectly pretentious Percy decided he was too good for their family, Fred turned his back just as hard as Percy did, and he _meant_ it with every iota of his being. (Later, he throws food at him with every iota of his being. Take that, Weatherby.)

And when Dolores Umbridge tried to inflict her reign of terror on the school, it was only inevitable that Fred and George would instigate a war of chaos in the midst of their triumphant departure. (And who needs to graduate, anyway?)

And when he saw people living in fear, Fred took up a microphone and headed straight for Lee Jordan, no matter the risk, no matter the cost. (That's always been Fred's motto, hasn't it?) _Potterwatch_ in 5, 4, 3, 2 . . . (It's Rapier, not Rodent.)

And when Percy came back at the last moment with his tail between his legs, Fred was the first to forgive him because really, what's family for if not taking you back after your major screw-ups?

Fred lived a goofy, passionate, extreme life. No regrets, no in-betweens. He loved his friends and he loved his family, even ickle Ronniekins and perfect Percy. He laughed and he cried, but he laughed a hell of a lot more.

So it's only fitting that that's how he died.

People say he died with the ghost of his last laugh still etched upon his face. They say his brother George was inconsolable and his other brother Percy wouldn't leave his side for a long, long time. They say he was a loving brother who died too young. They say he'll always be remembered.

But no one ever talks about how he felt. Then again, you don't normally get to hear the opinions of the dead.

Let's do, shall we?

When Fred dies, he thinks that he always imagined there'd be more flowers. More fanfare. A band, maybe. He thought there'd be a crowd of adoring fans or whatnot (not that he hoped his fans would die before him or anything.)

He definitely didn't think he'd be in his childhood house. He didn't think the Burrow could ever be this clean. And he didn't think he'd be naked. Clothes appear. Odd, but convenient.

He didn't think it'd be empty. Well, empty save for one person. And it's not the person he was hoping to see.

"How you doin', Fred?" asks a tall, black-haired guy with glasses.

"Harry! How're you dead? You can't be dead! I'll — I'll kill you!" threatens Fred.

Harry chuckles. "You can't kill the dead. But as far as I know, the jury's still out on whether or not Harry's actually dead. Personally, I'm leaning towards 'not.' I'm James, but you can call me Prongs."

"You're Prongs?" asks Fred in utter disbelief. "And you're _Harry's_ dad? Oh, just wait till George hears thi— oh."

James nods sadly. "So you've realized. It took me about as long too."

Suddenly, Fred doesn't care in the slightest who this prat is. All that matters is he's standing in between Fred and his twin.

"Take. Me. Back," he demands.

James shakes his head. "It doesn't work that way. I wish it did."

"I don't care! Take me back!" Fred repeats furiously. "I can't leave him! I can't! I _can't_! You don't understand! He's my twin! I can't leave!" He lunges at James.

"And I left my brothers," retorts James, holding him steady, though Fred resists. "I left Sirius and Remus, and I left my _son_!" He takes a deep breath. "Trust me, I understand."

Fred shakes his head. "There has _got_ to be a way. I can't leave him!" He pauses a moment, thoughts racing through his brain. "What about Nearly Headless Nick? He went back."

"And he lives without living," finishes James. "He watches without doing. He's alone from his time. Everyone he ever knew and loved has gone on. And he can never, _never_ change his mind."

"It doesn't matter," insists Fred. "I can be there for him. That's all I care about."

"He'll be here soon enough," soothes James. "And if you really care about him, hope you don't see him anytime soon."

"How did you do it?" asks Fred. "Just leave everyone. Leave your son."

James laughs bitterly. "I did exactly the same thing you did. But I decided I'd rather be fully here than half there. To do any differently is not the kind of lesson I wanted to teach my son, and it's not the kind of father I wanted to be."

Fred gulped. "I'll see him again?"

James grimaced. "For both our sakes, I bloody hope so."

Fred takes a step back. For the first time since dying, he feels . . . small. "Where now?"

James holds out a hand. "On," he says simply, and somehow Fred understands.

He takes his hand.

(Many years later, he's standing in Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes, waiting to greet his brother.

"Hey, Georgie," he says, and he smiles and means it. "How you feelin'?"

George grins. "Holy," he replies.

Fred laughs, just as contagious and uncontrollable as ever. "Merlin, I haven't heard that one in ages. Great company up here, but the humor's subpar. You ready to go?"

"Go where?"

Fred winks. "On.")


	10. Foolish: In Defense of Ginny Weasley

_When Ginny opened her eyes, she saw an angel. She was stunning, with red hair just like Ginny's and very familiar green eyes and a kind, radiant smile. It was the sort of smile that lit up rooms and very nearly forced you to smile back, it was so contagious. And Ginny spent so long simply staring at the angel that she almost didn't realize where she was._

_It was her room, exactly as she'd left it before Hogwarts. There was an empty space where the diary had been the last few weeks of summer._

_Tom. The diary._

_It hit Ginny like a freight train, that this was not where she should have been. She_ should _have been on the cold, damp floor of the Chamber, watching Tom grow stronger as she grew weaker. She_ should _have been lying in a small puddle of her own tears, in the reflection of which she could see her pale, weak face. She_ should _have been close to death._

_She should not have been here, with an angel, feeling safe and warm and healthier than she has all year._

_"Where am I?" she ventured to ask the angel, who moved to sit next to Ginny on her bed._

_"In a sort of limbo, I suppose, between life and death," explained the angel. She took Ginny's small hand in hers. "Hello, Ginny. I'm Lily. It's all going to be okay."_

_Ginny's lip quivered; she hated feeling helpless, and yet here she was, scared and unable to do anything. Could she even trust this Lily? She certainly couldn't trust Tom. But there was no one else._

_"It's all my fault," she wailed, and Lily wrapped her arms around her. "The chickens and Mrs. Norris and the students and Harry, and I wanted to say something, but I was so scared, and I'm so_ stupid _, and I just — I just —"_

_"You just wanted someone to talk to, I know," soothed Lily. "Listen to me," she said with solemnity, looking straight into the girl's hazel eyes and speaking each with firmly, "no matter what_ anyone _tells you, you need to know that it was not your fault. You are just as much a victim as anyone else. You were manipulated and possessed and terrified to your bloody core, and you did everything you could. There will be people who will try to blame you and who will try to make you feel like less than you are, Ginny, but you are_ not _foolish or stupid or just some scared, helpless little girl._ You _are strong."_

_And when Ginny felt an odd tug, presumably in one of two ways: towards life or death, Lily said something very odd indeed._

_"Harry," she almost whispered, "he's happy?"_

_"Yes" was her simple reply._

Many years later, Ginny would realize who this mysterious angel was and, more importantly, that she had been wrong on one count — she _was_ foolish. Unflinchingly and irrevocably so.

She was foolish enough to have a fangirl obsession over a legend, though many others made the same mistake (read: Romilda Vane). She was foolish enough to trust a diary that responded to her. She was foolish enough to not tell anyone when said diary soon became apparently dangerous. She was foolish enough to join a secret organization and rebel against the Ministry; she even helped name it. She was foolish enough to fall in love with Harry Potter, a boy who literally attracted all manner of treacherous things.

"Foolish," her father said that day in Dumbledore's office.

"Foolish," she said to herself every day thereafter. "Foolish, foolish, foolish."

"Foolish," spat every victim of her renowned Bat Bogey-Hex.

"Foolish," scoffed Phlegm (ahem, Fleur) at her utter un-ladylikeness.

"Foolish," murmured every student in the halls who caught wind of her year one actions.

"Foolish," sneered Severus Snape as he docked yet another twenty points from Gryffindor.

"Foolish," her mum sighed whenever she didn't quite stack up to be the perfect daughter she'd envisioned (i.e., different from her sons).

"Foolish," smiled Harry after the Battle of Hogwarts, in which she was never supposed to fight.

It was her utter foolishness that encouraged Ginny to befriend freak-of-her-year Loony (er, Luna) Lovegood, who turned out to have one of the most beautiful hearts of anyone she'd ever known.

It was her absolute lack of sense that made her such a damn threat on that Quidditch field, in any position she played (she never had a problem with the steep dives).

It was her infectiously incautious manner that lured in bloke after bloke like a moth to a flame (and her unapologetically independent manner that soon repelled them, mostly).

It was her reckless abandon that propelled her repeatedly into the path of Cruciatus curses that final dark year, that kickstarted the D.A. and tried to steal Godric Gryffindor's sword (what a rubbish punishment she got anyway).

Everybody knows about the journey of the Chosen One that year, who was on the run and hunted and searching desperately for a way to save them all, but what about those he left behind? The ones who threw themselves in front of first years who didn't know any better, because better it be them who got tortured. The ones who shamelessly stood up to Snape and the Carrows and took hell for it. The ones who kept up morale that long year, even as they slowly disappeared.

Ginny Weasley was not simply another fangirl, or Ron's annoying little sister, or Michael's or Dean's ex, and _certainly_ not just Harry Potter's girlfriend.

She was strong and courageous and talented and compassionate and unequivocally a Gryffindor. She was bold and confident and clever and, yes, foolish. And for that, she would never apologize.

She was no damsel in distress, and she was no one's sidekick. (Put her on a Quidditch pitch, and she'd kick Harry's ass. Put her in a duel, and she'd hold her own.) She was not helpless, not by a long shot, but she helped those who were because she remembered the feeling. She would never forget it. Dementors made Harry faint, but they made her shake, and they always would, especially after 1998.

She wasn't a glorified hero of the war; that was Harry and Hermione and Ron and, to some extent, Neville, but she was a hero of Hogwarts. She stayed and she fought and she survived. She was sixteen years old and taking Unforgivables on the daily and regretting nothing. She was sixteen years old and holding her dead brother's hand and vowing to mourn later.

When she was eleven years old, she'd poured her soul into a book and, like Pandora's box, unleashed a terrible monster on Hogwarts' populace, and the monster had been _her_. She'd been foolish enough to trust something with a hidden brain, but as the youngest Weasley, poor and left out, she'd found that she couldn't trust things with obvious brains either. She'd been foolish enough to steal her brothers' brooms, but she'd found, in the suffocating chaos of her home, that the sky was the best place to breathe. She'd been foolish enough to charge into the Department of Mysteries based on the visions of a boy the media had been painting as a lunatic all year, but she'd found, in everything she'd heard and seen, that some things are worth being foolish for. She'd been foolish enough to go into her sixth year with unapologetic disregard for authority and indifference to punishment, but she'd found, with the Unchosen One and the school freak by her side, that sometimes a bit of foolishness is more than warranted; it is necessary. She'd been foolish enough to believe in hope on the worse days, but she'd found, with Tom Riddle's haunting voice still in her head, that hope is much more powerful than anything _he_ had ever known.

So yes, Ginny Weasley was foolish, stupidly, hopelessly so, and (she learned) that's a strength, not a weakness.


	11. Silly: In Defense of Lavender Brown

It's the textbook love story: Boy meets Girl. Boy and Girl barely acknowledge each other for five years. Girl falls in like with Boy. Boy and Girl enter relationship. Boy spends suspiciously long time with Other Girl. Boy gets poisoned and fakes a coma whenever Girl comes by to visit. Girl sees Boy with Other Girl and assumes Boy is cheating on her. Girl breaks up with Boy.

Lavender Brown is a superficial, immature teenage girl who serves as nothing more than a bland plot device and comedic relief (or so we assume). She is jealous, clingy, and selfish. She is Ron's mistake and Hermione's (unworthy, laughable) foil. She is gullible (enough to blindly believe Trelawney), and she is vain (unlike the practical Hermione, Ron's real love interest), and she is possessive ("My Sweetheart", anyone?).

She is everything Hermione isn't, isn't she? A nice contrast to the real heroine? As Cho is to Ginny . . . ? She is the teenage adolescence personified, and in that, she is the worst bits of us. Ah, that's the crux of it, isn't it? Because if being young and foolish is a crime, then you can go right ahead and condemn me too, me and 11.2% of the world.

I mean, honestly, what a loon. She put stock in Divination, which is absolutely ridiculous (do horoscopes come to mind?). She spent hours in that Hogwarts bathroom, and later in the Room of Requirement's, staring at the mirror and critiquing her every flaw (sound familiar?). She took her first boyfriend and held him so tight he nearly suffocated (but we can't possibly relate, can we?). She embarrassed herself a hundred times over (and we've never done the same? I have.). She cared for nothing but herself (and how self-sacrificing were you at age sixteen?).

But Lavender Brown is nothing more than a ditz.

She loved Professor Trelawney like Harry loved Hagrid (though almost nobody respected either). She brought that old fraud fresh flowers on the hard days and unbridled hope and youth on the best (later, that old fraud would bring crystal balls and uncharacteristic ferocity). She defended Trelawney when that phony professor received nothing but doubt and cynicism. She loved that woolly subject like Harry loved Defense, and she got an O.W.L. in it too.

But Lavender Brown is capable solely of triviality.

I don't want to hear another story about a lovesick adolescent or a pathetic coward. Give me a story about two best mates, who stuck by each other through good times and bad. Give me a story about two run-of-the-mill, _relatable_ girls who _braved_ trial after trial (Harry Potter was not the only one who attended Hogwarts from 1991 to 1998, you know). Give me a story about Lavender Brown and Parvati Patil, who braided the hair of every willing refuge in the Room of Requirement seventh year, who took turns taking curses aimed at the younger students. I wanna hear _that_ story.

Give me a story about a girl who painted her face pretty every day from the moment she turned fifteen. A girl who refused to let bruises and cuts and curses keep her from looking beautiful, because she'd be damned if she gave up for _them_ , for practicality, because nothing at age seventeen should be _practical_. A girl who wore her bruises like the newest eyeshadow and curled her hair as it slowly fell out from stress. A girl who taught younger girls to wear makeup too, because she knew that sometimes you have to paint on your warrior face. Bravery is not always an instinct, you know.

Give me a story about a girl who thought she needed a boy to keep her strong, because the world was getting scary and she needed something to hold onto. Give me a story about a girl who learned just how wrong she was. Give me a story about a girl who spent her final year being not only her own hero but someone else's too. Give me a story about a girl who charged into battle on May 2, not because she wanted to but because she knew she _could_. She'd been in battle all year.

Don't give me a romance; the world has got quite enough of those. Give me a story of empowerment, of 'no, I can't's and 'yes, I will's and 'don't tell me what the hell I can and can't and should do's. Give me a story of Lavender Brown, who doesn't need a boy or a fortune or anything else to define her; she can manage that quite well on her own. I don't want to hear about Rosaline, and I don't want to hear about Romeo and Juliet either. I want to hear about a girl who picked herself up because she knew she'd be doing it quite a bloody lot in times to come, and she might as well start now.

Don't tell me about a damsel-in-distress; that's rather overrated, don't you think? Tell me about a girl who went to the Hog's Head one fateful day in fifth year to learn how to defend herself, and who used that knowledge two years later. Tell me about a girl who could quite take care of herself, thank you very much, but who still sometimes doubted her own ability because she was young and self-deprecating and just like anyone else.

Give me a story without a happy ending, because "these violent delights have violent ends," and Lavender was violent to a fault, in the way that "violent" means "passionate" and "impulsive." Spin me a tale of Lavender Brown, impulsive until the day she died, falling off a balcony, and Fenrir Greyback, all-around monster, stealing the life from her young, silly, vivacious body because this is a war, and not everyone walks away. Remind me how Hermione stopped him before he could degrade Lavender any further, but the damage was done and the price paid. Give me the story of a lively young girl who died a horrible, horrible death in a war too big for her. Give me that story, because it happens all the time.

Tell me about how Hermione came back for her, and so did Trelawney, and so did Parvati. Tell me about a group of teenagers who won the war, but they didn't, really. Tell me about how Hermione was the one to tell her parents, but Parvati gave the eulogy. Tell me about how they'd buried her with bags of tea leaves, and how Trelawney never taught that lesson again (Firenze would take over soon). Tell me about how, at her funeral, like so many others, she was posthumously awarded the Order of Merlin, First Class. She more than deserved it, don't you think?

So as silly and naive and childish as she was, Lavender Brown was a hero in her own right, and I'd be proud to find a bit of myself in her.


	12. Ruthless: In Defense of Bellatrix Lestrange

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The ketchup story is from a personal experience. Don't judge, okay?

When Bellatrix woke, she was wearing clean, white robes in a clean, white room. Across from her, however, was the dirtiest, most disgusting creature of all.

"I grew up not knowing to shake my ketchup," said Ted Tonks, sitting, calm as you please, opposite her. "My family never did it. I reckon nobody ever told my parents any different either."

Bellatrix lunged at him, spewing an incomprehensible series of words and phrases: "Master," "Filthy, disgusting," something about "deserve" and "peace in death," with a good few spats of "Mudblood" mixed in for good measure.

They seemed, however, to be separated by an invisible but impenetrable screen so that she could not harm him, and she was lacking a wand with which to kill the roach.

"For me, it was normal to eat ketchup with the liquidy bits. The right way, even," continued Ted as though she'd made no movement or interruption whatsoever. "It wasn't until my first sleepover that that habit was, luckily, corrected."

"Your point being, Mudblood?" drawled Bellatrix in her masterfully bored tone.

His muddy brown eyes pierced into her as he answered, "We don't question the things we grow up knowing."

We all assume Harry had the worst childhood, sequestered in a cupboard under the stairs, mocked and insulted, practically enslaved, and perhaps he did, but people forget the pressure of the aristocratic purebloods. Bellatrix grew up in a house of shadows and mutters and unjustified arrogance. She grew up in a house where upturned noses were praised and teary eyes were indicative of the weak. Where affection was unheard of and "Toujours Pur" something one ought to be proud of. There was no Mum and no Dad. Her _mother_ made bitter tea with a taste that stuck with you long after you drank it; her _father_ threatened misbehavior with Unforgivables. When Bellatrix played war, Mudbloods were the villains, whose sole purpose and reason of existence was to be defeated and stomped out, like an infestation of termites. She grew up knowing her family tree like the back of her hand, that a person's ancestry would always, _always_ be more important than their character and, more importantly, _defined_ their character. That power meant more than compassion, and emotion had no place here. Most importantly, she grew up knowing that approval meant love.

Bella and Andy and Cissy, they grew up idolizing their parents, supporting everything they stood for. And Bella, being the oldest, felt a certain amount of responsibility to set a proper example for her younger siblings. So it was she who taught Andy and Cissy which forks and spoons and knives to use at which times and how to play very, very quietly so as not to disturb Mother and Father. It was she who taught them the difference between Mudbloods and purebloods and why the latter were far superior. It was she who would wipe away their childish tears and tell them that the powerful never, ever cry. And sometimes, it was she who took the blame and the beating for the errant broken vase. (Sometimes, in Bella's more improper moments, she could be persuaded into having snowball fights and building forts and stealing food from the kitchens before dinner.) (But she'd never admit to it.)

By age eleven, Bellatrix was a miniature version of her mother, though much, much prettier and a bit less composed. She strode onto the Hogwarts Express with her chin so high she could see the roof, and she hexed another first year (obviously a Mudblood) for looking at her wrong. It was never a question what House she'd be in. She made friends with the right sort of people and scoffed at the lessers, just as she'd been told all her life. She blazed through classes with skill that (begrudgingly) impressed her teachers and left her classmates (terrifyingly) defenseless. And when her sisters joined Slytherin as well, it meant she'd done her job right.

Sitting across from a Mudblood too stupid to shake his condiments, Bellatrix remembered her first ketchup moment. She was newly fifteen and Andy twelve, and the latter had forced her down to the kitchens after curfew. Practically bouncing up and down, Andy (to the dismay of the House Elves) got down a nice big teapot (not the pretty porcelain ones Mother owned, but a sensible ceramic one) and made tea. And when Bella cautiously but politely sipped from the cup, it tasted nothing like what Mother made.

"See, Bella?" exclaimed Andy with her bright eyes and wide smile. "Tea doesn't have to taste mean!"

And she was right. Gone were the biting daggers Bella had come to expect, poking and scalding her tongue. Instead, the taste of chamomile and honey, sweet and smooth, soothed her throat. And something about it didn't taste right.

"Who taught you this?" she asked slowly, venom dripping from her words.

Andy, too excited about her discovery, didn't seem to notice. "My friend Ted! He shows me things from his home all the time! Did you know Muggles have these writing utensils called pencils, and you can erase your mistakes with them? And they have this wonderful thing called film, and if you go to a cinema it'll tell you a story! And the tea! Ted says his mum makes it better than him, but I don't see how that's possible, and —"

"This _friend_ of yours," Bellatrix sneered, anger radiating off her, is a _Mudblood_?"

Andy hesitated. "Well, I talked about it with Ted, and he reckons he prefers the term 'Muggle-born.'"

Bella hit the counter with such force that the tea spilled and the remaining House Elves ran for cover. "How can you do this, Andy?" she hissed. "To Mother and Father, our family! Think of what people will say!"

Andy, timidly, began drawing circles in the ground with her foot. "Do you ever wonder," she began, "if Mother and Father might be _wrong_? About all of this, this blood purity" — Andy wrinkled her nose — "and 'Muggle-borns are lesser' thing?"

And Bellatrix, briefly, wondered what she'd done wrong, how possibly her sister had found it within herself to sympathize with the ant instead of introducing him to the boot. But she looked at her sister, with her bright eyes and (once) wide smile and thought, _anything that makes Andy this happy can't be bad. Even . . . war generals must understand the other side before defeating it._

So she said nothing and stalked away. And when she saw her little sister, so obviously corrupted, and laughing with a boy in yellow-trimmed robes, she said nothing. And when she saw, years later, them kissing in a long-abandoned corridor, she said nothing and walked past, head held high and hands shaking, ever so slightly.

It was malicious little Lucius Malfoy who ratted them out. He'd been ogling at Andy's gentle beauty for years, made petulant from his numerous rebuffed advances, and really, it was only a matter of time before the truth was revealed.

Andy thought it was her.

"You just couldn't leave well enough alone, could you, Bella? Couldn't stand the thought of your little sister, happy with a Muggle-born! Well, guess what? I am!"

"You're not my sister," sniffed Bella haughtily, just as she'd always been taught. "You haven't been for a very long time."

And it was true. If Bellatrix hadn't had reason enough to despise Mudbloods before, one had stolen her sister.

That summer, Bellatrix watched _Andromeda Black_ get snubbed off the family tree, and she mourned the girl she'd taught everything. The girl who would always trip in Mother's high heeled shoes and would sometimes (all the time) slop bitter tea down her chin, that was her sister, and she was well and truly dead.

But appearances were more important than reality, she'd grown up knowing, so that September she went back to Hogwarts and denied ever being related to Andromeda. She could finally fit Mother's sweeping gowns and she wore them proud, under her silver and green robes, all sharp angles and deadly glares and undeniable beauty. She let handsome Rodolphus Lestrange hold her hand in the corridors because he was a good, pureblood young man, and that mattered more than anything, and she hexed Mudbloods a little meaner than before, a little more permanent. She cast Unforgivables like her father always threatened, and she _meant_ them.

Bellatrix graduated Hogwarts and got home to find a man, a revolutionary, in her parlor that claimed to be able and willing to change their world, to finally rid them of their Mudblood problem, and she thought, _here's a man who knows what he's doing_ , so she shook his hand firmly and introduced herself.

She'd marry Rodolphus and fall in love with this man who called himself Lord Voldemort, because appearances are important but power and approval mean love, and that's what her Lord offered. She'd see her baby sister marry that Lucius Malfoy in a very loveless union because Cissy knew just as well how to survive. She'd take the Dark Mark, feel it burn into her skin and think, _this is what power feels like_ , and she relished it. (Cissy never took the Dark Mark because she knew how to survive.)

She'd hear rumors about a woman named Andromeda Tonks and a baby named Nymphadora and she'd snarl and find a stupid little Mudblood to suffer.

She'd remain dedicated to her Lord long after everyone else had died or turned their backs (including cowardly Malfoy), and she did everything she could to bring him back because that's what you do for the people you love, and she loved him beyond all else. She'd spend fifteen long years in a cell for that love, and she escaped a little less sane and a lot less beautiful. (Imprisoned in Azkaban, she wasn't faced with the memories of the horrible things she'd done. No, instead she relived her sister's betrayal, because that was the thing she truly regretted.)

She'd serve her Lord to the day she died, and she'd never look back. She'd die defending herself and her Lord, his last and most loyal follower, and Molly Weasley would kill her because she understood that obsession was not love and that family was worth everything (Bellatrix had not loved her family for a very long time).

She'd die with many, many notches on that old crooked wand of hers, of things she'd done and, worse, enjoyed. She thought herself a success, a pride to the family, for living up to everything Mother and Father had taught her, for being just as dangerous as they'd made her.

This is no fairytale, and Bellatrix no hero. There is no happy ending, only a deserved one. But Bellatrix was never one to question the things she'd grown up knowing, and so she'd die with her ketchup unshaken.

I hope she got a chance for redemption, even in death. I hope Ted Tonks took her under his wing and reformed her, that he introduced her to his lovely half-blood daughter who hated her name and was clumsy just like Andy, and I hope they changed her mind about things. I hope, by the time Andy finally joined them, Bella was waiting with open arms and two mugs of sweet tea. I hope she finally understood that love was not a synonym but a language all its own, that she loved her sisters and grew to love the niece she'd killed but never known. I hope she apologized, one day, to Frank and Alice Longbottom, who'd regain their sanity in death, and that she'd trade in her mother's daunting, sweeping robes for a hand-knit jumper. I hope, one day, that she thanked Hermione Granger for undoing her work, and that she finally, finally forgave herself.


	13. Immature: In Defense of Parvati Patil

When Parvati and Padma were young, their parents would drag them to what could only be described as 'pureblood functions' — the Malfoys, Parkinsons, Crabbes, Goyles, Averys, Bulstrodes, Crouches, Flints, Greengrasses, Zabinis, etc., carefully arranged around a long, perfectly neat table, kids at one end, adults at the other. The adults would talk about anything and everything, their noses in the air, their manners precise. The children would speak quietly amongst themselves, but always, always they were watching the adults, mimicking them, clinging to their every word and opinion. Parvati would observe eagerly; Padma would gaze with thoughtful consideration. Every time the subject of Muggle-borns came up, Parvati would notice her parents stiffen, their responses shorten. But still, they continued to go.

At eleven years old, Parvati sat on a rickety stool with an ancient, patched hat covering her eyes, and it offered her Gryffindor, and she imagined her sister, no doubt regarding her with that same pensive look from the Ravenclaw table and answered it 'yes.'

It was naive, she knew, to choose the House of bravery out of fear of being compared to her twin in the House of intelligence, but Parvati, who tended to act first and think later, wanted to step out of Padma's shadow and make her own.

So she bounded over to the table of red and gold and sat next to a first year with tight ringlets and an infectious smile. Her name was Lavender, and she was going to be a star like Celestina Warbeck one day, Parvati was informed. Later that year, Lavender would share her _Witch Weekly's_ , and Parvati would teach her nine different ways to braid her hair. One of the girls in her dormitory, Hermione, would scoff at their giggles and hide superiorly behind stacks of books; Parvati and Lavender would make fun of her bushy hair behind her back because they were young and immature and really, who has hair that big?

In third year, she and Lav fell head over heels for Divination, spending long afternoons sipping tea with Professor Trelawney and trying to decipher the shape of their tea leaves. Lav found it funny, how Professor Trelawney always saw something bad, but Parvati looked for something good until she could convince herself it was there.

It was silly, she knew, to believe in being able to predict the future, but something about knowing what would come next comforted her.

So she and her best mate climbed those long, creaky stairs day after day, year after year, until they moved from tea leaves to crystal balls to constellations, and Parvati soaked it in with the same eagerness with which she had once eyed her parents. Trelawney orated warnings, but she served sweet lemonade, and Parvati tried hard to focus on that. One day, Hermione harrumphed yet again, and Parvati sniffed haughtily and put her nose in the air and never felt more like her mother.

The summer before seventh year, Lavender bought three tubes of shockingly red lipstick at an overpriced boutique in Diagon Alley and when Parvati asked her why, she said wearing it made her feel brave.

That year, she and Lav took turns braving the rage of Snape and the Carrows, taking curses meant for someone else. They sprayed rebellion on the walls and helped teach first years how to defend themselves.

It was foolish, she knew, to step in front of someone you maybe don't know and wait for the pain of a Cruciatus to incapacitate you, and to do it again and again and again and hope it happened to you and not someone else, but Parvati had chosen the House of courage and not wisdom.

Driven into shadows and hiding, Lav took shaking hands into her own and Parvati braided hair and the two talked about things like ' _make sure this part is tight_ ' and ' _don't forget to brush it smooth_ ' and tried to pretend the screams outside were part of a game.

It wasn't right, she knew, to turn a blind eye to what was happening before them, but she also knew that sometimes you need to think about anything else for a while.

She applied makeup everyday just as Lavender had taught her, but she kept her injuries uncovered, decorating her face and arms and felt proud.

It was stupid, she knew, to wear bruises like armor and think you're strong, but something about the way they blanketed her made it feel true.

When Harry Potter returned and her D.A. coin burned her pocket, Lavender let Parvati borrow some of her lipstick, and she marched into battle. It didn't take much; she'd done it all year.

At Lav's funeral, Parvati gave the eulogy, and she cobbled together a series of stupid little anecdotes to share, dropping them on the audience like grenades, one after the other, until she was giggling so hysterically she was rushed off the platform.

It was insensitive, she knew, to laugh like a maniac at her best mate's funeral, but Parvati felt she had done quite enough crying and Lav would have thought the same.

All surviving members of the D.A. were granted immediate acceptance into the Auror Training Program. The first day of training, Parvati applied an extra coat of Lav's lipstick and wore her gold coin on a string around her neck. She listened with Padma-like intent to the morning lecture and dreaded the afternoon placement duels (her lip quivered, but her wand grip was firm). She scribbled notes on a spare bit of parchment and took the lecturer out for dinner (she gave him tips on how to do things more efficiently).

When she got home, her parents told her that it wasn't healthy to cling to the violence of the war, that she needed to move on. She had, she retorted, but the rest of the world hadn't, and that's who she would be helping. "The war's over," she told them, and something about it didn't ring true. (Later, to her reflection, she'd say, "We won," and those words would feel just as hollow.)

Amycus and Alecto had worn loud shoes, the kind that thudded and clacked and sent survivors scattering like cockroaches for years after. Two days into training, Parvati bought shoes just as loud and wore them for hours afterward, pacing back and forth until she no longer flinched at the sound.

It was crazy, she knew, to think that's where her real fears lay, but she wanted, for once, to be the scariest thing around, not to feel powerful, but maybe, just maybe, to feel a little less helpless.

Years later, she'd return to Hogwarts for a guest lecture from time to time, but it'd never feel like home again. She'd spend hours in the Room of Requirement, which had somehow survived, and stare into the mirror just like she'd done a thousand times before. Years later, she'd marry Dennis Creevey, who had a beat-up old camera and some blurry photos. She had a long since useful tube of lipstick and a fake Galleon (but sometimes she could still feel the ghost of its burn). He'd lost a brother and she'd lost a sister in all ways but blood. Years later, she'd name her twin daughters Padma and Lavender, and she'd kiss them with bright red lipstick.


	14. Cold: In Defense of Narcissa Malfoy

It's funny, how things happen in patterns.

Two years after the Battle of Hogwarts, Narcissa Malfoy was released from Azkaban, thanks to the forgiving testimony of one Harry Potter, who hadn't forgotten the woman who saved his life to save her son's. Her husband would be serving for another eighteen years. Two weeks later, Andromeda Tonks received an invitation to tea. She ripped it up and went back to feeding her grandson.

Two months after that, she received another, and she accepted.

Malfoy Manner was just as dark and foreboding as she had always imagined. After all, it was not as though she'd ever been before. As she walked the pristine walls, her sensible trainers barely making a sound, she thought she could hear Hermione's screams, Ron's agony. She was convinced she saw Dobby's blood on that far wall, and Charity Burbage's bones in the corner. If she had gone down to the dungeons, she would have imagined a too-skinny blonde girl comforting a shivering frail old man, and the boy and goblin who had been with her dead husband in his last moments. But she didn't dare venture down there.

"Hello, Andromeda," spoke a voice from down the hall, poised and emotionless as ever. Cissy, of course, looked dangerously stunning in her afternoon gown, the kind of beautiful that left you feeling haunted.

"What are we doing here?" demanded Andy, exhausted and having no patience for her theatrics. She had left Teddy with Harry, and it's not as though she didn't trust him, the Boy Who Lived, but he had made a bit of a habit out of nearly dying, and she just wanted to go home.

Narcissa didn't even blink. "Making amends," she said.

At age 13, Narcissa watched _Andromeda Black_ as it was burned off the family tapestry, and she understood. No, Narcissa was many things, but she was never stupid. Andy had fallen in love with a Mudblood, and she had chosen this price to pay. Maybe, once upon a time, Narcissa might have done the same, maybe she would have looked at Ethan Thomas and smiled back, but she knew which way the tides were changing and she was too good at surviving to be reckless.

She hadn't grown up in a house full of love. It wasn't smart and it wasn't becoming, especially of a young woman such as herself. Women who showed emotion were weak, and Narcissa was anything but. Andy had been stupid enough to marry for love, and Narcissa only wished life was that simple. No, she married for safety, and she married for status. She married to survive, to survive this war that was coming that everyone seemed so excited about. To Narcissa, it seemed a good way to die. But she wouldn't be caught dead on the wrong side of it. So she nodded when things were said to her and sat quietly out of the way, and she did exactly what was required of her, nothing more and nothing less, but she didn't take the Dark Mark. It didn't seem prudent. It wasn't.

"Why do you care?" remarked Andromeda snidely. She could be almost as frigid as Cissy when she wanted to. "Why now? Why now — because my Mudblood husband is dead? Because my werewolf son-in-law and my half-blood daughter — because they're gone too? Why not all those years ago, when every single one of you turned your back on me, and I had no place to go? Why not after you saved Harry's life or before you watched my daughter and her husband die? _Bella_ killed her, you know." She was shaking now.

"I know," said Cissy. "I was waiting for the right moment."

"Right," agreed Andromeda hotly, "because it's all about your _timing_ , isn't it? _Your_ needs, _your_ machinations. God, you're so manipulative."

"Perhaps," sniffed Cissy, "but I find it's preferable to being tactless."

Andromeda scoffed. "I see you've developed Mother's self-righteousness. How you people can live with yourselves, I'll never know. Bella went insane, Narcissa, but you just went cold."

She left.

She left. Narcissa lay awake some nights, thinking about that. "It was _her_ choice," Mother said. "She left. She betrayed us." Bella wouldn't even talk about her. "We don't have another sister," she'd snarl. "It's just us, Cissy. We're family, and family doesn't hurt family."

Narcissa was the forgettable sister, she'd always felt. She had neither Bella's conviction not Andy's grace. But she had the best memory of any of them.

She remembered crying and Bella's screaming, Andy's hugs and Mother's tea, awful pureblood functions that she'd attend all her life and Father's threats. She remembered that Andy had the best hugs, the ones that fully enveloped you and made everything seem okay.

She remembered the day that Andy came home different. Distant. Bella was haughty as ever, but it was almost like she wouldn't talk to them anymore. Andy holed herself up in her room and study, but sometimes Cissy saw owls flying in and out of her window.

They said Andy left the day they found out she betrayed them, but Narcissa knew the truth. Andy had left long before that.

Narcissa remembered Bella always being off with her mean but socially respectable friends, Andy in her room. She drank bitter tea alone with Mother. Father would come home and get drunk, but she was the only one downstairs then. She moved her fingers along it, even now, that jagged scar from the time he got mean drunk. But he was always mean. Andy was still there when that happened, up in her room, but Bella was out, and Mother's beauty sleep was not to be disturbed. She could have healed it, but something told her to remember that feeling, that pain, and to never let go of it.

Andromeda didn't answer her invitations again for a long time. But the next time she came, Draco was home.

"Wow," she stuttered, "you look so much like him."

But she didn't mean Lucius. Everyone else meant Lucius, but Andromeda saw what Narcissa saw. She meant Father. Narcissa saw it in the way he stood, the shape of his nose, everything but his eyes. Those were Draco's alone.

Sometimes Narcissa looked at him and almost — almost — felt that familiar twinge of fear. He looked so much like him, and he could be cruel, sometimes. She remembered the dread she felt watching him receive the Dark Mark. But then, he was Draco. Her Draco, who she'd do anything for. Even choose to not survive.

Draco, now, was a shell of who he was before. Scared. Haunted. The Mother in her would tell him to push away that emotion, to tamp it down, to keep up appearances and to never let anyone see your struggle. But the mother in her wanted to comfort him, to take him in her arms and give him an Andy-like hug, to tell him that it's okay to fall off the face of the earth every once in a while, so long as he always gets back up. Narcissa settled for neither, for saying and doing nothing. She was a Black, you see, and he a Malfoy.

But Andromeda, hard-hearted as she might be toward Narcissa, noticed as well. His haunted eyes reminded her of her own. Hers, though, were from loss. His were from taking. And she realized what Narcissa had, in her own way, been trying to do all along.

"Making amends," she'd said. Bridging this gap, she meant, between victim and perpetrator, hero and villain. They were all human, and they had all tried their hardest to survive. They just went vastly different ways. She saw the way Narcissa looked with pride and the slightest glimmer of love at her son just as she'd seen it in herself and Nymphadora. And she knew that Narcissa was not extending an olive branch for her sake; she'd never admit that she needed her sister. But Narcissa knew that Draco needed his aunt, to do what she couldn't because she had never truly learned it. The importance of vulnerability, compassion, love. How to survive in this new world where even the "nobility" must be better.

Narcissa thought herself to be a lost cause, but she would do anything for Draco.

Andromeda remembered packing Ted's bags for him so he could run faster, lying to the Ministry about where he'd gone. She remembered collapsing on their bed in tears but knowing she'd do it all again in a heartbeat. Anything for the ones you love.

She remembered pleading with Nymphadora not to go. "Just one fight," she'd begged. "You can miss one fight." Her daughter had smiled. "Not this one, Mum." She remembered taking Teddy from her and promising to keep him safe. "Make them sorry they ever hurt your father," she'd told her, because Andromeda was never the quick to forgive type. And she'd sent her daughter marching towards death.

She remembered Harry, exhausted but at ease, finally, in mourning but free, pulling her aside after Nymphadora's funeral the night of May 4, 1998. "Your sister, Draco's mum — Narcissa," he'd rambled. "She saved my life that night. I, er, I thought you ought to know. She did it for her son, so obviously her intentions weren't completely altruistic, but she — she could've chosen not to, not to have done. So, er, yeah. I thought you should know that she wasn't . . . hopeless, I reckon. She's not a lost cause."

Oh, how wrong he was. Narcissa was anything but redeemable, deep-rooted in her pride and prejudice — not in a Jane Austen sort of way, either — and callously indifferent, but there were two things over the course of her life that she had internalized: pain is inevitable and survival at all costs. How sad that she had learned both those things, both those priorities, from her family, the family which Andromeda had gotten to escape. Though, to be accurate, Andy had been thrown out.

Andromeda thought about these things as she took in Draco, his once-arrogant air, his proper posture, his aristocratic features, his haunted eyes, and she re-evaluated. She stepped forward, and she took his hand in hers, and she looked Cissy squarely in the eyes before fully addressing Draco and saying, "It's nice to formally meet you. Do you like tea? I'm sure no one's ever made it to you the way I make it."

Because if there's anything life has taught Andy, it's that family is family, and some you choose but others you're born with, but if you're lucky, they're your chosen family too. Two years before, she'd had three spindly, skinny teenagers living with her because she refused to let them stay in horrible Aunt Walburga's dump with a crotchety old house-elf, and they refused to be separated, and Ron wasn't ready to go home quite yet, and sure, maybe she needed to not be alone in her creaking house with a crying baby. But at the moment, here she was, in a house still echoing with screams of the innocent, the broken sitting down among the breakers and enjoying a cuppa, and surely she must be insane. Surely her sister shouldn't be forgiven this easily, not when Andromeda's lost so damn much, but things happen in patterns, don't they?

Two years after Andromeda lost everything, she gained her sister (back), and a nephew.


	15. Starstruck: In Defense of Colin Creevey

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a little different than what I normally write. I'm not even sure if it counts as a proper defense. You can decide.

On 3 May, 1998, Harry Potter walked away from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Dennis Creevey walked into it. Hours after Voldemort had died, fifteen year old Dennis went to collect a beat up camera and a dead body. He stood there, staring at the rows of people who'd never get up again, and he remembered.

_"A magic school?" asked Dennis eagerly, desperately trying to arrange himself in a way that showcased all of his 9 1/2 years (and maybe older). "And Colin gets to go? Because he has magic? Do I have magic? D'ya have to be eleven to go? Can I visit?"_

_"I'm sure you can go too, Dennis, someday," Colin promised. "Anything I can do, you can do better." He turned to the old, severe-looking lady in the weird dress. "Professor McGonagall, is it possible for there to be two wizards from the same M-Muggle family?" he asked, struggling over the strange word._

_"Why, anything is possible," mused the lady, peering at Dennis through almost cat-like eyes. "I'll admit, I have rarely heard of such a thing in all of my career, but I most certainly don't doubt that it could happen."_

_"It will," Colin insisted respectfully. "Dennis got all the talent in the family. You should expect him in two years. I mean," he turned to look at Dad, "it's not too much, is it? I'll do some chores for the Henstridges next door to help pay, but if you have to choose between sending me and sending Dennis, it's him who ought to go."_

_"Don't worry about it," replied Dad. "Professor, if I may see you in another room?"_

_"Certainly, Mr. Creevey," she agreed._

_Dennis grabbed the phone off the wall and pointed it at the couch. "Abracadabra!" The fact that nothing happened didn't seem to faze him._

_Colin laughed. "We're wizards, not magicians, remember?"_

_"Well, what do wizards say?" retorted Dennis._

_Colin seemed stumped. "Alright, fine. You win. But when I get there, I'll write you letters every single day telling you about everything, and then we'll know."_

_"Your handwriting is rubbish, Colin," Dennis pointed out._

_Colin frowned. "Email? Maybe there's a spell?"_

_Dennis shrugged. Colin glanced nervously at the door Dad and the McGonagack woman had gone though._

_"Do you think there'll be money enough for us both?" he whispered. "Milkmanning doesn't pay a fortune."_

_"Of course there will be," Dennis answered, unable to imagine a world where they couldn't go for a reason so stupid as money. He blinked. "Oh, you didn't mean it, Colin, did you? You wouldn't stay home so I could go?"_

_Colin smiled. "Of course I would. Mum told me it would be my job to take care of you from now on, and what kind of brother would I be if I left you alone for long?"_

_Dennis gasped. "Maybe we can bring her back! Professor Mackygall said anything was possible!"_

_Colin shook his head. "Just because something can be done doesn't mean it should be, Dennis."_

He was buried next to her. CAROLINE CREEVEY, LOVING MOTHER, and COLIN CREEVEY, DUTIFUL SON AND BROTHER. For a long time after everyone else had gone, Dennis stood there, peering down at the mother he barely remembered and thinking that one day no one would know who either of them were. In one hand, he held a photo album, filled with moving and still pictures alike. In the other, that same old camera.

_"Are you nearly finished packing, Colin?" echoed their father's voice from outside._

_"As soon as Dennis gives back my wand, I will be!" he yelled back._

_"Dennis, give your brother his wand!"_

_"But it's not fair! Why do I have to stay and wait for another two years? Eleven is a stupid age, anyway!"_

_"You won't think that in two years!" Colin shot back._

_"One-and-a-half!" corrected Dennis before realizing he wasn't helping himself. "Or something like that!"_

_Dad came into the room where Colin was chasing Dennis, who was gripping the wand so tightly his knuckles were white. He picked up the younger boy, plucked the wand out of his hands, handed it to Colin, and said, "Two years will come by soon enough. And when it does, Colin will already know everything about Hogwarts, so he'll be able to show you everything. Just imagine the advantage you'll have with an older sibling there!"_

_"I guess," mumbled Dennis._

_"Now, as for you," Dad said, turning to Colin. "Here."_

_Colin stared at the gift in awe. "It's Mum's camera," he marveled._

_"An Argus C3 Matchmatic," said Dad fondly. "I bought you all the film you could possibly want too."_

_"Dad, no," he protested weakly. "This is too much."_

_"Nonsense. You have always been too responsible, and I've appreciated everything you've done for me and for Dennis since Mum died, really, I have. But you've had to grow up so fast. Now you have the chance to be a kid again. It's not much, but you're going to make memories that we, Dennis and I, are not going to be there for, so make sure we see them. Besides," he added, "you have awful handwriting."_

_"Oh, thank you!" Colin squeaked. "I'll take so many pictures you won't miss a single thing! It'll be like you're there already, Dennis!"_

_"It better be," Dennis grumbled._

Dad found him sitting on the floor, flipping through the album. Every letter Colin had written to accompany the photos was fanned out around him. There was a noticeable gap between the end of Colin's first year and the beginning of his second.

"He used to tell me horror stories about that big, yellow eye, y'know. To this day, I think it scared him more than me."

"Well, it scared me plenty," Dad replied after a long while. "It's enough to accept the existence of a magical world without having your son almost die in it."

"Why'd you send him back?" asked Dennis.

Dad pointed at Dennis' lap. "He wanted to finish that book. That's what he told me, at least. I always thought it had a little more to do with the book's main occupant."

Dennis knew what he meant. Colin had seriously calmed down with the obsessive picture-taking after his first year, but 90% of the book still featured Harry Potter at differing ages, in differing settings. On the Quidditch field. In the Room of Requirement. Even the ones of the last night, which Dennis had developed and inserted himself, showed Harry, exhausted and haunted but with a sort of steely determination in his eyes. Hermione and Ron were there too, beautifully captured, seeming to support each other's weight, and the rest of the DA makes some appearance in one form or another, but they all seem an afterthought. Consistently, Harry is the center of attention.

"The older he got, the less moving pictures he made," remarked Dennis. "When he first learned how to make them, he sent us so many I thought he was trying to make a movie."

"He got better," replied Dad simply.

He got better. He learned the value of capturing a single instance in time, rather than a clip. He learned how to tell a story without showing all of it. He learned to pick his moments and to appreciate imperfection. But he never stopped focusing on Harry.

_"Dennis, I need to tell you something."_

_"No, you just dragged me out of the Great Hall, mid-meal, to play a round of two-person Quidditch, didn't you?"_

_Colin flushed. "I'm not good at excuses. But listen, and please don't be mad. I-I think I like Harry."_

_"That's a very badly kept secret, Colin," answered Dennis, fighting to keep a serious face._

_"But I think I_ like _him!" whined Colin. He paused. "And I don't think I like girls. Not like that, anyway."_

_Dennis shrugged. He didn't really see how it was a big deal, and it was kind of weird to talk about this with his brother, but he could sense Colin's anxiety. "I'll just have to like enough for the both of us, I suppose."_

_Colin broke into a relieved grin. "Really? You mean you're not mad or - or ashamed of me?"_

_"You're talking to the kid who fell into the lake just getting here," joked Dennis. He smiled. "And do you know who still welcomed my sopping wet self?"_

_"Me?" guessed Colin._

_"Exactly." Dennis started heading back to the Great Hall. He was just sure someone had already eaten some of his food. Probably Alexander. "But you might want to be a little more discreet about it. You gushed about Harry so much that I was convinced_ I _was in love with him by the time I showed up to Hogwarts."_

_Colin paused. "You really grew up, didn't you? You don't need me anymore."_

_"I'll always need you," replied Dennis distractedly. "So what'd'ya going to do about Harry?"_

_Colin's shoulders slumped. "Nothing. I think the fact that he asked Cho Chang to the Yule Ball speaks for itself. Have you seen the way he looks at her?"_

_Dennis fought back what little breakfast he'd managed to consume. "I'd give anything to have missed it."_

_Colin sighed. "I'd give anything to be at the receiving end of it."_

_"Gross!"_

_Their laughter rang through the halls._

"I thought you might want this. I already made a copy of it, so don't feel bad about taking it. He'd want you to have it, y'know?"

Harry gingerly took the photo. Dennis couldn't help thinking that he looked so different from the weary kid in the shot, a little happier, better rested, somewhat taller. What a difference a couple of months could make. But Colin would never change again.

Harry let out a breath as he studied the image. "I had no idea he still thought of me like this. So . . . put together. A superhero." He shook his head. "He was the hero, not me."

"I agree," said Dennis. "But he would've told you that he was a hero because of you." He turned to go.

"Er, Dennis?" Harry said nervously. "I just wanted to say I'm sorry. If I had known, I never would've let him go. He shouldn't have fought. He was underage. We — well, McGonagall — sent them away, but I didn't think to check. It didn't occur to me that he'd come back. It's my fault he died."

"I knew," said Dennis quietly. "I sent him back."

_"You want me to join an illegal organization with you to impress your crush?"_

_"No," Colin protested. "I want us to join it so we can learn how to defend ourselves. Actually learn. If things go the way I keep hearing, we're going to need it."_

_"But what if — and I know it's hard for you to believe this is possible — what if Harry's wrong? Plenty of people believe so, and —"_

_"I just know, Dennis, okay?"_

_"Okay, but I'm not going to go easy on you to impress him."_

_Colin laughed. "You couldn't keep up with me."_

_"Maybe I'll summon the Giant Squid for assistance. We're kind of mates, y'know?"_

He paused, looking at the two fake Galleons. Dennis vaguely remembered finding Colin's in the pocket of his jeans after the coroner had returned the clothes. He remembered flinging it — and his — across the room much more vividly. The Galleons seemed to burn in his hand, a phantom pain of the last night they had.

"You should take them," said a voice from behind him, startling Dennis into almost dropping them. "To remember him by."

"I'm going to Hogwarts, Dad," he said sadly. "I'll have plenty of things to remember him by."

"Are you sure you want to, after everything that's happened?"

"He died, Dad," Dennis snapped. "That's what happened." They stood silently for awhile. "I'm sorry."

"No," Dad insisted. "I need to learn how to say it. I just worry, you know. It can't be good for you, to live there again."

"Maybe not," conceded Dennis. "But I need to finish this book," he said, running his finger along the blank pages.

He left the coins, side by side, on his desk at home. Colin would have taken a picture of them. He didn't.

_"Why'd you bring your camera, anyway?" Dennis asked. "There's nothing worth taking a picture of or safe enough to keep."_

_"Habit, I guess," replied Colin, tuning into the latest broadcast of Potterwatch._

_"How long do you think we can stay here before we have to move again?"_

_"A couple days at most," Dad answered. "We don't know much, but Potterwatch says that their methods of detecting us are improving. It's nice to receive even this much news."_

_"Do you think we'll ever stop hiding?" asked Dennis numbly._

_"I think the better question is if they'll ever drop searching," Dad responded, knowing that they might always hide now, in one form or another._

_"It'll get better, I know it," Colin said confidently. "As soon as Harry gets back. He'll save us."_

_That night, Colin took his only picture in months. It was of the moon. There was nothing much remarkable about it, but Dennis knew what he meant. Wherever Harry was, wherever anyone was, and wherever they might go, they were all and always would be under the same moon._

At first he was like Colin, capturing every little thing, more blurry photos than not. Then little things began to stick out to him, and he would instinctively reach for the camera and snap a shot. Thestrals from the carriages outside, though they didn't show up in the pictures. (It didn't matter. More kids than ever seemed to see them, that year. One kid, a seventh year, asked him how he could. The Creeveys had spent the last year expelled, running.

"We got captured, once. This other family we didn't even know was near us, killed right there. We only got away because this camera," he said, holding it up, "has a blinding flash.")

The Sorting Hat, still as alive and functional as ever, but the slightest bit burnt. Trelawney, tired and mournful, sharing a crystal ball and two cups of tea with no one. Luna Lovegood fingering a necklace with the Deathly Hallows symbol. A tube of bright red lipstick against a mirror in the Room of Requirement.

Harry, Ron, and Neville visited once, too, to wish Hermione luck before her NEWTs and to say hi to Luna and the other DA members. Duly, Dennis took a photo of Harry, staring in pain at the too-clean Great Hall floor. He caught one of Ron gazing fondly at a faucet with a snake engraved on it once when passing the first floor girls' room. Another of him very pointedly turned away from an area outside the Room. He photographed the reflection of Neville's eyes in Gryffindor's sword and got a candid of him helping Professor Sprout plant seeds in a greenhouse.

Whatever he did, he avoided the Room. It had healed, somehow, but he didn't need to know what it might show him, and he didn't want to.

_"What if it's a trap?"_

_"It's not. D'you see the message on the coin? Harry's back! We have to go to help!"_

_"It could still be a trap," Dennis argued. "What can we even expect to do? We're underage. We haven't learned anything new or even practiced what Harry taught us in well over a year."_

_"We're members of Dumbledore's Army," Colin said firmly, "and that still means something to me. I'm going, whether you support it or not."_

_"I don't support it," Dennis said brashly, "but I support you. I'll cover you with Dad," he promised, checking to make sure he was still out gathering food. "Can you find a way there?"_

_Colin nodded. He picked up his camera, lips pressed firmly together, eyes set, hugged his brother, and walked away. Dennis didn't ask why he had taken it. People like Lavender Brown and Parvati Patil, they wore makeup like armor, but Colin had his camera._

_"Colin!" he yelled after him. His older brother, his hero, turned around. "Don't let anyone hold you back! You go in there, and you make those Death Eaters sorry they ever messed with us!"_

_Colin saluted._

On 2 May, 2003, Dennis sat at the bar of the Leaky Cauldron. A photo album sat on the stool next to him, completed, but he was still taking pictures. He copied some and waited for the right person to give them to. He'd just given one to Hannah Abbott of herself scrubbing down the counter, her hand absentmindedly tugging at her hair. He'd also given her the two he'd taken of Neville three years before (she'd smiled and said she liked the second one best) to give him at the memorial.

The fifth anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts. Dennis reckoned he should spend it like he had done that night: not at Hogwarts, not surrounded by dozens of other sober people mourning their lost ones and definitely nowhere near the "heroes" of the war. So here he sat, with an old, worn camera and a newly finished album, drinking firewhisky and trying desperately to forget for one night.

"Nice album," a woman with a blunt voice said. He looked and saw Parvati Patil gazing at him steadily, two stools over, wearing a fake Galleon around her neck and bright red lipstick. "Can I look at it?"

He nodded.

She took her time, not saying anything, just turning page after page until she reached the point where Colin's work stopped and his began. The shift was obvious; Dennis had never been one for heavy symbolism. Colin's pictures orated untold stories, saw beauty in mundanity. Dennis' rehashed known tales, though perhaps through a different light, highlighted how _wrong_ everything felt, and expected you to keep up.

Sometimes, though, sometimes Dennis took a photo with Colin in it, just a little hint of Colin's compassion mingled in with his harsh truths.

Parvati stopped at the page with Trelawney and the lipstick, running the tips of her fingers over both until Dennis said, "You can keep them. I have copies."

"No," she said faintly. "They belong here. This — this is good. You should publish it."

"No," he said firmly. "Neither Colin nor I did it for attention."

"Why'd you do it then?" asked Parvati, arching an eyebrow.

Dennis shrugged. "He had horrid handwriting."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like I said before, this isn't my usual defense. I like to think of this as Dennis's idea of one; it expects you to take what you're shown and figure it out for yourself. And I figured the best legacies we tend to leave behind are how we're remembered by the people closest to us.


	16. Ambitious: In Defense of Percy Weasley

~~Dear~~ ~~My dear~~ ~~F~~

To be entirely honest, I'm not sure why I'm doing this. ~~It's not as though you'll ever read~~ I suppose I just wanted to apologize for my actions of the past two years. I know now that I was wrong ~~and that my being wrong cost you your~~ ~~cost me my~~ I've known for quite a while that I was wrong, but the shame of facing you and Mum and Dad and everyone else after everything I've done, the guilt of everything I've said, the fear of being rejected as I'd rejected them— all of you, the anger, the hurt, the stubbornness, and the pride — mostly the pride — kept me sequestered far, far away, so much so that it took the promise of a war-ending battle for me to work up the courage to face you lot again. 

That's funny, isn't it? The _courage_ to face you again, my family of lions. We grew up in a house of red and gold, of bravery and chivalry and everything in between, and I had never been able to find it in myself to admit that I didn't quite feel that I belonged. 

At age eleven, I sat on a rickety stool in my second- (or third-) hand robes and begged the Hat not to put me in Slytherin. Do you know what it said in response? "That's the secret. The wand chooses the wizard, but the wizard chooses the House." And so the amused old Hat relented and with a "GRYFFINDOR!", I joined the ranks of my (for once) approving older brothers. (You were nine and had already far outshone me in magical talent. I was jealous.) 

With time, I forgot the Sorting Hat's indecision, its musings, but the Hat, I'm sure, which had seen into the minds of thousands of students over the course of its many years, probably didn't. The vain part of me imagines it reflecting on what an interesting case I was, a child who had grown up idealizing valor but having such Slytherin-like determination. You see, when the Sorting Hat sees into one's mind, it sees their thoughts, memories, feelings, anything that affects their personality, which is everything. ~~(I wonder what it thought when it saw~~

So in my case, the Hat saw me, at age six, holding two-year-old Ron's hand walking down Diagon Alley as the family shopped for Bill's Hogwarts supplies. People snickered as we passed, eyeing our stained and patched clothes, the dirt on our faces, our unruly red hair. (You and George were four and giving them something much more entertaining to sneer at.) The Hat saw me start to understand what people thought of us. It saw me try to take great care of my possessions because I knew they'd be yours soon enough. It saw me, age five, take in a shaking rat with a missing toe. I reckon I did it because I understood what it was like to feel powerless for something that wasn't your fault, after seeing the disrespect ~~Father~~ Dad got at work. It saw me, year after year, stare longingly through the store windows at something or other and know I'd never be able to have it. It saw me resolve to earn it, whatever it was, someday. (I should've learnt to be grateful for what I already had, but I've never been good at learning practical lessons, only theoretical.) The Hat saw me, time after time, struggle to stand out in a family of seven children. (You never had that problem.) It saw me try to show ~~Mother~~ Mum some drawing I'd made, saw her distracted, "Mm, that's nice, Perce," while folding the fifth load of laundry and keeping an eye on you and George. It saw my desire to make Mum and Dad proud of me, one day, to see people stop and appreciate me, for once. (I understand now, the difference between attention and appreciation. How differently people interpret love. I saw it as glory. You saw it as fun.) 

It's these moments, these desires, cares, and thoughts that define a person, that the Hat uses. _Yes_ , my imaginary Sorting Hat thinks (worries? fears?), _Percy Weasley would have done well in Slytherin._ But at age eleven, I, still young and always, always loyal, looked up at Dad and Mum and Bill and Charlie, these Gryffindors, with such unbridled admiration, and thought, _Why can't I be like them?_ The Hat decides the House of Courage may yet do me good. Sometimes it does not put people where they fit so much as where they'd like to. 

At age thirteen, I signed up for every conceivably available elective and aced them all. When I told Mum at the station, she gave me such a warm pat on the head that it was almost worth it and said, "You're such a smart b- FRED AND GEORGE, WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?" ( ~~Please know, I don't blame you. I would give anything~~ Dad was too busy telling Charlie about this Muggle car he had just purchased and was thinking of, ahem, _adjusting_ to even hear. (At a certain point, I stopped trying to tell them much at all.) 

At age sixteen, a little gold badge tumbled out of the envelope along with his letter. It said 'Prefect', and Mother was so proud, she bought me my very owl, and — ever self-absorbed — I thought, _Finally_. That year, I bossed people around, and _they actually listened_ , and I thought, _This is what success feels like_. That year, I got twelve O.W.L.s, but Mum was more worried about poor Harry, stuck in that awful home, and worried about Charlie, all the way in Romania, and baby Ginny, off to Hogwarts in just a few short months to really notice. 

If I tried, I could almost believe that I didn't need my family's approval or attention. I hid Penny from everyone, and no one found out except Ginny. I withdrew within myself, found family in friends as pompous and self-important as I was. And do you know what I discovered? When I stopped trying to make myself heard, nobody noticed me at all. The eternal clamor of our house dropped from nine voices to eight, and no one so much as batted an eye. My little rebellion was outshone by a flying Ford Anglia, and I retreated to the shadows. 

The only place that I could make myself heard was school, and I did. I led and accomplished and graduated with as much fanfare as I'd ever hoped for. And it wasn't enough. _I need to be better_ , I thought, _do something bigger. That will make me happy._ I worked menial jobs under Crouch, my idol, because by then I'd learned the patience involved in rising to the top, and I was willing to wait for it, to kiss up to the right people, and to bide my time. 

My time came faster than expected. So fast, in fact, that it made Dad suspicious. And for me, that was the breaking point. I'd spent my entire life searching and working and doing everything I could to earn the attention (the love) of my family, and they refused to believe it was earned? I'll never forget the look on their faces — on _your_ face — when I left, but _this was nothing_ , I told myself hotly, _compared to what they did to me for years on end._

At age 21, ten years after I joined the red and gold ranks of every Weasley before me, I stumbled through that tunnel into the Room of Requirement, full of self-loathing and guilt and every-bloody-thing else, and I'll never forget the way you held out your hand to me, first to forgive me, after everything I'd done and all the pain I'd caused. I'm sure you knew even then that you were the deciding vote in my fate, that the family would look to you for guidance on whether I was actually worthy of being forgiven, my slate wiped clean. I was half sure you'd stuff me right back into that hole and send me careening back to the Hog's Head, and I would've deserved it too. I deserve worse than you could ever do to me, and you had every right to tell me to never show my face ever again. But you didn't. You shook my hand. And for that, I will never forgive you. You forgave me, and that was by far the worst mistake you ever made, because it cost us both everything. 

You said, "You're joking, Perce!" with that characteristic stupid smile and mocking awe. You said, "You actually are joking, Perce. . . . I don't think I've heard you joke since you were —" 

And that was it. You never even got to finish your sentence, all because I came back, and I distracted you, and you _died._ And that is unforgivable. 

Did you ever think about how easy it would be? To die? How simple? How quick? One explosion, one spell, one last breath (or laugh, in your case), and it's all over. Did you ever wonder if maybe the world would be better without you in it? Spoiler alert: it isn't. But it might be without me. Just think, if I hadn't've come, if I had just gone with someone else, you might still be here. If I had died, you might still be around. Mum wouldn't be crying, her sobs echoing so the whole house can hear, clutching that stupid metal hand like it will somehow conjure you back to life. Dad wouldn't be staring off into space, a statue made of flesh. Bill wouldn't be pretending everything's fine, and Charlie would say something, and we might actually see George once in a while, and Ron would come home, and Ginny would stop shaking. And they look at me now, and I know. I know that it's my fault and I know that they know and I know that we will never be okay again and we never smile and we will never, ever laugh, because that was always your forte. 

Fred, without you, who are we? 

P.S. Twenty years later, I have my answer. Fred, without you, we are broken. We are guilt-ridden. We are constantly thinking of you. We laugh less. We reminisce. We spend hours, days stuck in the past, stuck in that awful battle. We cry, and some days those tracks seem to weather us away until there is nothing less. And we learn, learn to avoid those triggers and help each other through our personal hauntings, learn to never again allow such hate to seep into our society, detected but indifferent to it. We learn to hold ourselves and our government accountable. We learn to control our urges (rashness, ambition, pride). Yes, we are broken. We are hurt. We are mending. 


End file.
